\/ 


,1 


THE    MEANING   OF    HISTORY 

AND  OTHER  HISTORICAL  PIECES 


THE 


MEANING    OF    HISTORY 


AND  OTHER   HISTORICAL   PIECES 


BY 

FREDERIC    HARRISON 


THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON:   MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 
IQOO 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1894, 
BY  MACMILLAN  AND  CO. 


Crown  8vo  edition  set  up  and  electrotyped  October,  1894.     Reprinted  March, 
August,  1895;  January,  1896. 
New  edition,  12010,  August,  1900. 


NortoooD  ipress 

J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith 
Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


NOTE. 

THIS  volume  contains  a  collection  of  essays  designed  to 
stimulate  the  systematic  study  of  general  history.  They 
are  (with  two  exceptions)  the  permanent  and  condensed 
form  of  historical  lectures  given  in  a  series  of  courses 
at  various  places  of  education.  The  writer  has  been  con- 
stantly occupied  with  the  teaching  of  history  since  1862  ; 
and  the  first  two  chapters  of  this  book  were  the  intro- 
duction to  a  course  of  lectures  given  in  that  year  to  a 
London  audience.  They  were  printed  at  the  time,  but 
the  issue  has  been  long  exhausted.  The  third  chapter 
(which  is  in  effect  a  Choice  of  Books  of  History)  and  also 
the  fifth  chapter  (a  synthetic  survey  of  the  Thirteenth 
Century)  were  inaugural  lectures  given  in  the  New  Schools 
at  Oxford  to  the  summer  vacation  students.  The  other 
chapters  are  based  on  lectures  given  by  the  writer  at 
various  times  at  Newton  Hall,  Toynbee  Hall,  the  London 
Institution,  and  other  literary  and  scientific  institutions. 
Several  of  these  chapters  (about  half  the  present  volume 
in  bulk)  have  already  appeared  in  the  Fortnightly  Review 


VI  NOTE. 

and  in  one  or  two  other  periodicals.  They  have  in  all 
cases  been  carefully  revised  and  partly  rewritten  ;  and 
the  author  has  to  express  to  the  Editors  and  Proprietors 
of  these  organs  his  grateful  thanks  for  the  courtesy 
with  which  he  has  been  enabled  to  use  them. 


CONTENTS. 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.    THE  USE  OF  HISTORY i 

II.    THE  CONNECTION  OF  HISTORY 24 

III.  SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY 77 

IV.  THE  HISTORY  SCHOOLS  (AN  OXFORD  DIALOGUE)      .        .        .118 
V.    A  SURVEY  OF  THE  THIRTEENTH  CENTURY        .        .        .        .139 

VI.    WHAT  THE  REVOLUTION  OF  1789  DID 172 

VII.     FRANCE  IN  1789  AND  1889 207 

VIII.    THE  CITY  :  ANCIENT  —  MEDI/EVAL  —  MODERN  —  IDEAL  .        .  222 

(i)  THE  ANCIENT  CITY 224 

(n)  THE  MEDIAEVAL  CITY 232 

(in)  THE  MODERN  CITY 239 

(iv)  THE  IDEAL  CITY 244 

IX.    ROME  REVISITED 252 

X.    IMPRESSIONS  OF  ATHENS 284 

XI.    CONSTANTINOPLE  AS  AN  HISTORIC  CITY 309 

(i)  BYZANTINE  HISTORY 309 

(n)  TOPOGRAPHICAL  CONDITIONS 319 

(in)  ANTIQUITIES  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE       ....  330 

XII.    THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE 341 

(i)  THE  HISTORICAL  PROBLEM 342 

(n)  THE  POLITICAL  PROBLEM 360 

XIII.    PARIS  AS  AN  HISTORIC  CITY 368 

vii 


Vlll  CONTENTS. 

CHAP.  PAGE 

XIV.    THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  PARIS 395 

XV.    THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  LONDON 412 

(i)  LONDON  IN  1887 412 

(n)  LONDON  IN  1894 430 

XVI.    THE  SACREDNESS  OF  ANCIENT  BUILDINGS        .        .        .        .  437 

XVII.     PAUEOGRAPHIC  PURISM             -                .....  456 


THE    MEANING   OF   HISTORY. 

CHAPTER   I. 

THE    USE    OF    HISTORY. 

WHAT  is  the  use  of  historical  knowledge  ?  Is  an  ac- 
quaintance with  the  events,  the  men,  the  ideas  of  the  past, 
of  any  real  use  to  us  in  these  clays  —  has  it  any  practical 
bearing  upon  happiness  and  conduct  in  life  ? 

Two  very  different  answers  may  be  given  to  this  ques- 
tion. The  Gradgrinds  and  the  Jack  Cades  assure  us  that 
there  is  no  use  at  all.  We  are,  they  would  say  with  Bacon, 
the  mature  age  of  the  world  ;  with  us  lies  the  gathered 
wisdom  of  ages.  To  waste  our  time  in  studying  exploded 
fallacies,  in  reproducing  worn-out  forms  of  society,  or  in 
recalling  men  who  were  only  conspicuous  because  they 
lived  amidst  a  crowd  of  ignorant  or  benighted  barbarians, 
is  to  wander  from  the  path  of  progress,  and  to  injure  and 
not  to  improve  our  understandings. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  commonplace  of  literary  gossip 
declares  that  history  has  fifty  different  uses.  It  is  amus- 
ing to  hear  what  curious  things  they  did  in  bygone  times. 
Then,  again,  it  is  very  instructive  as  a  study  of  character ; 
we  see  in  history  the  working  of  the  human  mind  and  will. 
Besides,  it  is  necessary  to  avoid  the  blunders  they  com- 
mitted in  past  days  :  there  we  collect  a  store  of  moral 
examples,  and  of  political  maxims ;  we  learn  to  watch  the 
signs  of  the  times,  and  to  be  prepared  for  situations  when- 
A  i 


2  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

ever  they  return.  And  it  cannot  be  doubted,  they  add, 
that  it  is  a  branch  of  knowledge,  and  all  knowledge  is  good. 
To  know  history,  they  conclude,  is  to  be  well-informed,  is 
to  be  familiar  with  some  of  the  finest  examples  of  elegant 
and  brilliant  writing. 

Between  the  two,  those  who  tell  us  plainly  that  history 
is  of  no  use,  and  those  who  tell  us  vaguely  that  history 
is  of  fifty  uses,  there  is  not  much  to  choose.  We  must 
thoroughly  disagree  with  them  both,  and  of  the  two  we 
would  rather  deal  with  the  former.  Their  opposition,  at 
any  rate,  is  concentrated  into  a  single  point,  and  may  be 
met  by  a  single  and  a  direct  answer.  To  them  we  may 
say,  Are  you  consistent  ?  Do  you  not  in  practice  follow 
another  course  ?  In  rejecting  all  connection  with  the  facts 
and  ideas  of  the  past,  are  you  not  cutting  the  ground  from 
under  your  own  feet  ?  Assume  that  you  are  an  active  poli- 
tician and  a  staunch  friend  of  the  conservative  or  liberal 
party.  What  are  the  traditional  principles  of  a  party  but 
a  fraction,  small,  no  doubt,  but  a  sensible  fraction,  of  his- 
tory ?  You  believe  in  the  cause  of  progress.  Yet  what  is 
the  cause  of  progress  but  the  extension  of  that  civilisation, 
of  that  change  for  the  better  which  we  have  all  witnessed 
or  have  learned  to  recognise  as  an  established  fact  ?  Your 
voice,  if  you  are  a  politician  and  a  democrat,  is  on  the 
side  of  freedom.  Well,  but  do  you  never  appeal  to  Magna 
Charta,  to  the  Bill  of  Rights,  to  the  Reform  Acts,  to 
American  Independence,  or  the  French  Revolution  ?  Or 
you  are  an  imperialist,  and  you  will  suffer  no  outrage  on 
the  good  name  of  England.  You  are  ready  to  cover  the 
seas  with  armaments  to  uphold  the  national  greatness. 
But  "what  is  the  high  name  of  England  if  it  is  not  the 
memory  of  all  the  deeds  by  which,  in  peace  or  war,  on  sea 
or  land,  England  has  held  her  own  amongst  the  foremost 
of  the  earth  ? 


THE    USE    OF    HISTORY.  3 

Nor  is  it  true  that  we  show  no  honour  to  the  men  of 
the  past,  are  not  guided  by  their  ideas,  and  do  not  dwell 
upon  their  lives,  their  work,  and  their  characters.  The 
most  turbulent  revolutionary  that  ever  lived,  the  most 
bitter  hater  of  the  past,  finds  many  to  admire.  It  may 
be  Cromwell,  it  may  be  Rousseau,  or  Voltaire,  it  may  be 
Robert  Owen,  but  some  such  leader  each  will  have ;  his 
memory  he  will  revere,  his  influence  he  will  admit,  his 
principles  he  will  contend  for.  Thus  it  will  be  in  every 
sphere  of  active  life.  No  serious  politician  can  fail  to 
recognise  that,  however  strongly  he  repudiates  antiquity, 
and  rebels  against  the  tyranny  of  custom,  still  he  himself 
only  acts  freely  and  consistently  when  he  is  following  the 
path  trodden  by  earlier  leaders,  and  is  working  with  the 
current  of  the  principles  in  which  he  throws  himself,  and 
in  which  he  has  confidence.  For  him,  then,  it  is  not  true 
that  he  rejects  all  common  purpose  with  what  has  gone 
before.  It  is  a  question  only  of  selection  and  of  degree. 
To  some  he  clings,  the  rest  he  rejects.  Some  history  he 
does  study,  and  finds  in  it  both  profit  and  enjoyment. 

Suppose  such  a  man  to  be  interested  in  any  study  what- 
ever, either  in  promoting  general  education,  or  eager  to 
acquire  knowledge  for  himself.  He  will  find,  at  every  step 
he  takes,  that  he  is  appealing  to  the  authority  of  the  past, 
is  using  the  ideas  of  former  ages,  and  carrying  out  princi- 
ples established  by  ancient,  but  not  forgotten  thinkers.  If 
he  studies  geometry  he  will  find  that  the  first  text-book 
put  into  his  hand  was  written  by  a  Greek  two  thousand 
years  ago.  If  he  takes  up  a  grammar,  he  will  be  only 
repeating  rules  taught  by  Roman  schoolmasters  and  pro- 
fessors. Or  is  he  interested  in  art  ?  He  will  find  the 
same  thing  in  a  far  greater  degree.  He  goes  to  the  British 
Museum,  and  he  walks  into  a  building  which  is  a  good  imi- 
tation of  a  Greek  temple.  He  goes  to  the  Houses  of  Parlia- 


4  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

ment  to  hear  a  debate,  and  he  enters  a  building  which 
is  a  bad  imitation  of  a  mediaeval  town-hall.  Or,  again,  we 
know  that  he  reads  his  Shakespeare  and  Milton ;  feels 
respect  for  the  opinions  of  Bacon  or  of  Hume,  or  Adam 
Smith.  Such  a  man,  the  moment  he  takes  a  warm  interest 
in  anything  —  in  politics,  in  education,  in  science,  in  art, 
or  in  social  improvement  —  the  moment  that  his  intelli- 
gence is  kindled,  and  his  mind  begins  to  work  —  that 
moment  he  is  striving  to  throw  himself  into  the  stream 
of  some  previous  human  efforts,  to  identify  himself  with 
others,  and  to  try  to  understand  and  to  follow  the  path  of 
future  progress  which  has  been  traced  out  for  him  by  the 
leaders  of  his  own  party  or  school.  Therefore,  such  a  man 
is  not  consistent  when  he  says  that  history  is  of  no  use  to 
him.  He  does  direct  his  action  by  what  he  believes  to  be 
the  course  laid  out  before  him  ;  he  does  follow  the  guid- 
ance of  certain  teachers  whom  he  respects. 

We  have  then  only  to  ask  him  on  what  grounds  he 
rests  his  selection ;  why  he  chooses  some  and  rejects  all 
others  ;  how  he  knows  for  certain  that  no  other  corner 
of  the  great  field  of  history  will  reward  the  care  of  the 
ploughman,  or  bring  forth  good  seed.  In  spite  of  him- 
self, he  will  find  himself  surrounded  in  every  act  and 
thought  of  life  by  a  power  which  is  too  strong  for  him. 
If  he  chooses  simply  to  stagnate,  he  may,  perhaps,  dis- 
pense with  any  actual  reference  to  the  past ;  but  the 
moment  he  begins  to  act,  to  live,  or  to  think,  he  must  use 
the  materials  presented  to  him,  and,  so  far  as  he  is  a 
member  of  a  civilised  community,  so  far  as  he  is  an 
Englishman,  so  far  as  he  is  a  rational  man,  he  can  as  little 
free  himself  from  the  influence  of  former  generations  as 
he  can  free  himself  from  his  personal  identity  ;  unlearn  all 
that  he  has  learnt ;  cease  to  be  what  his  previous  life  has 
made  him,  and  blot  out  of  his  memory  all  recollection 
whatever. 


THE    USE    OF    HISTORY.  5 

Let  us  suppose  for  a  moment  that  any  set  of  men  could 
succeed  in  sweeping  away  from  them  all  the  influences  of 
past  ages,  and  everything  that  they  had  not  themselves  dis- 
covered or  produced.  Suppose  that  all  knowledge  of  the 
gradual  steps  of  civilisation,  of  the  slow  process  of  perfect- 
ing the  arts  of  life  and  the  natural  sciences,  were  blotted 
out ;  suppose  all  memory  of  the  efforts  and  struggles  of 
earlier  generations,  and  of  the  deeds  of  great  men,  were 
gone ;  all  the  landmarks  of  history ;  all  that  has  distin- 
guished each  country,  race,  or  city  in  past  times  from 
others  ;  all  notion  of  what  man  had  done,  or  could  do  ; 
of  his  many  failures,  of  his  successes,  of  his  hopes ;  sup- 
pose for  a  moment  all  the  books,  all  the  traditions,  all  the 
buildings  of  past  ages  to  vanish  off  the  face  of  the  earth, 
and  with  them  the  institutions  of  society,  all  political 
forms,  all  principles  of  politics,  all  systems  of  thought,  all 
daily  customs,  all  familiar  arts ;  suppose  the  most  deep-rooted 
and  most  sacred  of  all  our  institutions  gone  ;  suppose  that 
the  family  and  home,  property,  and  justice  were  strange 
ideas  without  meaning ;  that  all  the  customs  which  sur- 
round us  each  from  birth  to  death  were  blotted  out ; 
suppose  a  race  of  men  whose  minds,  by  a  paralytic  stroke 
of  fate,  had  suddenly  been  deadened  to  every  recollection, 
to  whom  the  whole  world  was  new,  —  can  we  imagine  a 
condition  of  such  utter  helplessness,  confusion,  and  misery  ? 

Such  a  race  might  retain  their  old  powers  of  mind  and  of 
activity,  nay,  both  might  be  increased  tenfold,  and  yet  it 
would  not  profit  them.  Can  we  conceive  such  a  race  act- 
ing together,  living  together,  for  one  hour  ?  They  would 
have  everything  to  create.  Would  any  two  agree  to  adopt 
the  same  custom,  and  could  they  live  without  any  ?  They 
would  have  all  the  arts,  all  the  sciences  to  reconstruct 
anew  ;  and  even  their  tenfold  intellect  would  not  help  them 
there.  With  minds  of  the  highest  order  it  would  be  im- 


6  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

v 

possible  to  think,  for  the  world  would  present  one  vast 
chaos ;  even  with  the  most  amazing  powers  of  activity, 
they  would  fall  back  exhausted  from  the  task  of  reconstruct- 
ing, reproducing  everything  around  them.  Had  they  the 
wisest  teachers  or  the  highest  social  or  moral  purposes, 
they  would  all  be  lost  and  wasted  in  an  interminable 
strife,  and  continual  difference  ;  for  family,  town,  property, 
society,  country,  nay,  language  itself,  would  be  things 
which  each  would  be  left  to  create  for  himself,  and  each 
would  create  in  a  different  manner.  It  would  realise, 
indeed,  the  old  fable  of  the  tower  of  Babel  ;  and  the  pride 
of  self  would  culminate  in  confusion  and  dispersion.  A 
race  with  ten  times  the  intellect,  twenty  times  the  powers, 
and  fifty  times  the  virtues  of  any  race  that  ever  lived  on 
earth  would  end,  within  a  generation,  in  a  state  of  hopeless 
barbarism  ;  the  earth  would  return  to  the  days  of  primeval 
forests  and  swamps,  and  man  descend  almost  to  the  level 
of  the  monkey  and  the  beaver. 

Now,  if  this  be  true,  if  we  are  so  deeply  indebted  and  so 
indissolubly  bound  to  preceding  ages,  if  all  our  hopes  of 
the  future  depend  on  a  sound  understanding  of  the  past, 
we  cannot  fancy  any  knowledge  more  important  than  the 
knowledge  of  the  way  in  which  this  civilisation  has  been 
built  up.  If  the  destiny  of  our  race,  and  the  daily  action 
of  each  of  us,  are  so  completely  directed  by  it,  the  useful 
existence  of  each  depends  much  upon  a  right  estimate  of 
that  which  has  so  constant  an  influence  over  him  ;  will  be 
advanced  as  he  works  with  the  working  of  that  civilisation, 
above  him,  and  around  him  ;  will  be  checked  as  he  opposes 
it ;  it  depends  upon  this,  that  he  mistakes  none  of  the 
elements  that  go  to  make  up  that  civilisation  as  a  whole, 
and  sees  them  in  their  due  relation  and  harmony. 

This  brings  us  to  that  second  class  of  objectors ;  those 
who,  far  from  denying  the  interest  of  the  events  of  the 


THE    USE    OF    HISTORY.  / 

past,  far  from  seeing  no  use  at  all  in  their  study,  are  only 
too  ready  in  discovering  a  multitude  of  reasons  for  it,  and 
at  seeing  in  it  a  variety  of  incongruous  purposes.  If  they 
suppose  that  it  furnishes  us  with  parallels  when  similar 
events  occur,  the  answer  is,  that  similar  events  never  do 
and  never  can  occur  in  history.  The  history  of  man 
offers  one  unbroken  chain  of  constant  change,  in  which 
no  single  situation  is  ever  reproduced.  The  story  of  the 
world  is  played  out  like  a  drama  in  many  acts  and  scenes, 
not  like  successive  games  of  chess,  in  which  the  pieces 
meet,  combat,  and  manoeuvre  for  a  time,  and  then  the 
board  is  cleared  for  another  trial,  and  they  are  replaced  in 
their  original  positions.  Political  maxims  drawn  crudely 
from  history  may  do  more  harm  than  good.  You  may 
justify  anything  by  a  pointed  example  in  history.  It  will 
show  you  instances  of  triumphant  tyranny  and  triumphant 
tyrannicide.  You  may  find  in  it  excuses  for  any  act  or 
any  system.  What  is  true  of  one  country  is  wholly  untrue 
of  another.  What  led  to  a  certain  result  in  one  age,  leads 
to  a  wholly  opposite  result  in  another. 

Then  as  to  character,  if  the  sole  object  of  studying 
history  is  to  see  in  it  the  workings  of  the  human  heart, 
that  is  far  better  studied  in  the  fictitious  creations  of  the 
great  masters  of  character  —  in  Shakespeare,  in  Moliere, 
in  Fielding,  and  Scott.  Macbeth  and  Richard  are  as  true 
to  nature  as  any  name  in  history,  and  give  us  an  impres- 
sion of  desperate  ambition  more  vivid  than  the  tale  of  any 
despot  in  ancient  or  modern  times.  Besides,  if  we  read 
history  only  to  find  in  it  picturesque  incident  or  subtle 
shades  of  character,  we  run  as  much  chance  of  stumbling 
on  the  worthless  and  the  curious  as  the  noble  and  the 
great.  A  Hamlet  is  a  study  in  interest  perhaps  exceeding 
all  others  in  fiction  or  in  fact,  but  we  shall  hardly  find  that 
Hamlets  have  stamped  their  trace  very  deep  in  the  history 


8  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

of  mankind.  There  are  few  lives  in  all  human  story  more 
romantic  than  that  of  Alcibiades,  and  none  more  base. 
Some  minds  find  fascination  in  the  Popish  plots  of  Titus 
Gates,  where  the  interest  centres  round  a  dastardly  ruffian. 
And  the  bullies,  the  fops,  the  cut-throats,  and  the  Jezebels 
who  crowded  the  courts  of  the  Stuarts  and  the  Georges, 
have  been  consigned  to  permanent  infamy  in  libraries  of 
learned  and  of  brilliant  works. 

Brilliant  and  ingenious  writing  has  been  the  bane  of 
history ;  it  has  degraded  its  purpose,  and  perverted  many 
of  its  uses.  Histories  have  been  written  which  are  little 
but  minute  pictures  of  scoundrelism  and  folly  triumphant. 
Wretches,  who  if  alive  now  would  be  consigned  to  the 
gallows  or  the  hulks,  have  only  to  take,  as  it  is  said,  a 
place  in  history,  and  generations  after  generations  of 
learned  men  will  pour  over  their  lives,  collect  their  letters, 
their  portraits,  or  their  books,  search  out  every  fact 
in  their  lives  with  prurient  inquisitiveness,  and  chronicle 
their  rascalities  in  twenty  volumes.  Such  stories,  some 
may  say,  have  a  human  interest.  So  has  the  Neivgate 
Calendar  a  human  interest  of  a  certain  kind.  Brilliant 
writing  is  a  most  delusive  guide.  In  search  of  an  effec- 
tive subject  for  a  telling  picture,  men  have  wandered  into 
strange  and  dismal  haunts.  We  none  of  us  choose  our 
friends  on  such  a  plan.  Why,  then,  should  we  choose  thus 
the  friends  round  whom  our  recollections  are  to  centre  ? 
We  none  of  us  wish  to  be  intimate  with  a  man  simply 
because  he  is  a  picturesque-looking  villain,  nor  do  we  bring 
to  our  firesides  men  who  have  the  reputation  of  being  the 
loudest  braggarts  or  keenest  sharpers  of  their  time. 

Let  us  pass  by  untouched  these  memoirs  of  the  un- 
memorable  —  these  lives  of  those  who  never  can  be  said 
to  have  lived.  Pass  them  all :  these  riotings,  intrigues, 
and  affectations  of  worthless  men  and  worthless  ages. 


THE    USE    OF    HISTORY.  9 

Better  to  know  nothing  of  the  past  than  to  know  only  its 
follies,  though  set  forth  in  eloquent  language  and  with 
attractive  anecdote.  It  does  not  profit  to  know  the  names 
of  all  the  kings  that  ever  lived,  and  the  catalogue  of  all 
their  whims  and  vices,  and  a  minute  list  of  their  par- 
ticular weaknesses,  with  all  their  fools,  buffoons,  mistresses, 
and  valets.  Again,  some  odd  incident  becomes  the  subject 
of  the  labour  of  lives,  and  fills  volume  after  volume  of  in- 
genious trifling.  Some  wretched  little  squabble  is  ex- 
humed, unimportant  in  itself,  unimportant  for  the  persons 
that  were  engaged  in  it,  trivial  in  its  results.  Lives  are 
spent  in  raking  up  old  letters  to  show  why  or  how  some 
parasite  like  Sir  T.  Overbury  was  murdered,  or  to  unravel 
some  plot  about  a  maid  of  honour,  or  a  diamond  necklace, 
or  some  conspiracy  to  turn  out  a  minister  or  to  detect  some 
court  impostor.  There  are  plenty  of  things  to  find  out,  or, 
if  people  are  afflicted  with  a  morbid  curiosity,  there  are 
Chinese  puzzles  or  chess  problems  left  for  them  to  solve, 
without  ransacking  the  public  records  and  libraries  to  dis- 
cover which  out  of  a  nameless  crowd  was  the  most  unmiti- 
gated scoundrel,  or  who  it  is  that  must  have  the  credit  of 
being  the  author  of  some  peculiarly  venomous  or  filthy  pam- 
phlet. Why  need  we  have  six  immense  volumes  to  prove 
to  the  world  that  you  have  found  the  villain,  and  ask  them 
to  read  all  about  him,  and  explain  in  brilliant  language  how 
some  deed  of  darkness  or  some  deed  of  folly  really  was  done  ? 
And  they  call  this  history.  This  serving  up  in  spiced 
dishes  of  the  clean  and  the  unclean,  the  wholesome  and 
the  noxious  ;  this  plunging  down  into  the  charnel-house  of 
the  great  graveyard  of  the  past,  and  stirring  up  the  decay- 
ing carcases  of  the  outcasts  and  malefactors  of  the  race. 
No  good  can  come  of  such  work  :  without  plan,  without 
purpose,  without  breadth  of  view,  and  without  method ;  with 
nothing  but  a  vague  desire  to  amuse,  and  a  morbid  craving 


IO  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

for  novelty.  If  there  is  one  common  purpose  running 
through  the  whole  history  of  the  past,  if  that  history  is 
the  story  of  man's  growth  in  dignity,  and  power,  and 
goodness,  if  the  gathered  knowledge  and  the  gathered 
conscience  of  past  ages  does  control  us,  support  us,  inspire 
us,  then  is  this  commemorating  these  parasites  and  off- 
scourings of  the  human  race  worse  than  pedantry  or  folly. 
It  is  filling  us  with  an  unnatural  contempt  for  the  great- 
ness of  the  past  —  nay,  it  is  committing  towards  our 
spiritual  forefathers  the  same  crime  which  Ham  committed 
against  his  father  Noah.  It  is  a  kind  of  sacrilege  to  the 
memory  of  the  great  men  to  whom  we  owe  all  we  prize,  if 
we  waste  our  lives  in  poring  over  the  acts  of  the  puny 
creatures  who  only  encumbered  their  path. 

Men  on  the  battle-field  or  in  their  study,  by  the  labour 
of  their  brains  or  of  their  hands,  have  given  us  what  we 
have,  and  made  us  what  we  are  ;  a  noble  army  who  have 
done  battle  with  barbarism  and  the  powers  of  nature, 
martyrs  often  to  their  duty  ;  yet  we  are  often  invited  to 
turn  with  indifference  from  the  story  of  their  long  march 
and  many  victories,  to  find  amusement  amidst  the  very 
camp-followers  and  sutlers  who  hang  upon  their  rear.  If 
history  has  any  lessons,  any  unity,  any  plan,  let  us  turn  to 
it  for  this.  Let  this  be  our  test  of  what  is  history  and 
what  is  not,  that  it  teaches  us  something  of  the  advance 
of  human  progress,  that  it  tells  us  of  some  of  those  mighty 
spirits  who  have  left  their  mark  on  all  time,  that  it  shows 
us  the  nations  of  the  earth  woven  together  in  one  purpose, 
or  is  lit  up  with  those  great  ideas  and  those  great  purposes 
which  have  kindled  the  conscience  of  mankind. 

Why  is  knowledge  of  any  kind  useful  ?  It  is  certainly 
not  true  that  a  knowledge  of  facts,  merely  as  facts,  is 
desirable.  Facts  are  infinite,  and  it  is  not  the  millionth 
part  of  them  that  is  worth  knowing.  What  some  people 


THE    USE    OF    HISTORY.  II 

call  the  pure  love  of  truth  often  means  only  a  pure  love  of 
intellectual  fussiness.  A  statement  may  be  true,  and  yet 
wholly  worthless.  It  cannot  be  all  facts  which  are  the 
subject  of  knowledge.  For  instance,  a  man  might  learn 
by  heart  the  Post-Office  Directory,  and  a  very  remarkable 
mental  exercise  it  would  be ;  but  he  would  hardly  venture 
to  call  himself  a  well-informed  man.  No  ;  we  want  the 
facts  only  which  add  to  our  power,  or  will  enable  us  to  act. 
They  only  give  us  knowledge  —  they  only  are  a  part  of 
education.  For  instance,  we  begin  the  study  of  mathe- 
matics ;  of  algebra,  or  geometry.  We  hardly  expect  to 
turn  it  to  practical  account  like  another  Hudibras,  who 
could  'tell  the  clock  by  algebra';  but  we  do  not  find 
Euclid's  geometry  help  us  to  take  the  shortest  cut  to  our 
own  house.  Our  object  is  to  know  something  of  the 
simplest  principles  which  underlie  all  the  sciences  :  to 
understand  practically  what  mathematical  demonstration 
means  :  to  bring  home  to  our  minds  the  conception  of 
scientific  axioms. 

Again,  we  study  some  of  the  physical  laws  of  nature  — 
plain  facts  about  gravitation,  or  heat,  or  light.  What  we 
want  is  to  be  able  to  know  something  of  what  our  modern 
philosophers  are  talking  about.  We  want  to  know  why 
Faraday  is  a  great  teacher  ;  to  know  what  it  is  which  seems 
to  affect  all  nature  equally ;  which  brings  us  down  heavily 
upon  the  earth  if  we  stumble,  and  keeps  the  planets  in  their 
orbits.  We  want  to  understand  what  are  laws  of  nature. 
We  take  up  such  pursuits  as  botany  or  geology  ;  but  then, 
again,  not  in  order  to  discover  a  new  medicine,  or  a  gold- 
field,  or  a  coal-mine.  No,  we  want  to  know  something  of 
the  mystery  around  us.  We  see  intelligible  structure,  con- 
sistent unity,  and  common  laws  in  the  earth  on  which  we 
live,  with  the  view,  I  presume,  of  feeling  more  at  home  in 
it,  of  becoming  more  attached  to  it,  of  living  in  it  more 


12  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

happily.  Some  study  physiology.  We  do  not  expect  to 
discover  the  elixir  of  life,  like  an  eminent  novelist,  nor  do 
we  expect  to  dispense  with  the  aid  of  the  surgeon.  We 
want  to  get  a  glimpse  of  that  marvellous  framework  of  the 
human  form,  some  notion  of  the  laws  of  its  existence,  some 
idea  of  the  powers  which  affect  it,  which  depress  or  develop 
it,  some  knowledge  of  the  relation  of  the  thinking  and 
feeling  process  and  the  thinking  and  feeling  organ.  We 
seek  to  know  something  of  the  influences  to  which  all 
human  nature  is  subject,  to  be  able  to  understand  what 
people  mean  when  they  tell  us  about  laws  of  health,  or 
laws  of  life,  or  laws  of  thought.  We  want  to  be  in  a  posi- 
tion to  decide  for  ourselves  as  to  the  trustworthiness  of 
men  upon  whose  judgment  we  depend  for  bodily  existence. 
Now,  in  this  list  of  the  subjects  of  a  rational  education 
something  is  wanting.  It  is  the  play  of  Hamlet  without 
the  Prince  of  Denmark  :  — 

'  The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man.1 

Whilst  Man  is  wanting,  all  the  rest  remains  vague,  and 
incomplete,  and  aimless.  Mathematics  would  indeed  be  a 
jumble  of  figures  if  it  ended  in  itself.  But  the  moment 
we  learn  the  influence  which  some  great  discovery  has  had 
on  the  destinies  of  man  ;  the  moment  we  note  how  all 
human  thought  was  lighted  up  when  Galileo  said  that  the 
sun,  and  not  the  earth,  was  the  centre  of  our  world  ;  the 
moment  we  feel  that  the  demonstrations  of  Euclid  are 
things  in  which  all  human  minds  must  agree  —  indeed, 
are  almost  the  only  things  in  which  all  do  agree, —  that 
moment  the  science  has  a  meaning,  and  a  clue,  and  a  plan. 
It  had  none  so  long  as  it  was  disconnected  from  the  history 
and  the  destiny  of  man  —  the  past  and  the  future.  It  is 
the  same  with  every  other  science.  What  would  be  the 
meaning  of  laws  of  nature,  unless  by  them  man  could  act 


THE    USE    OF    HISTORY.  13 

on  nature  ?  What  would  be  the  use  of  knowing  the  laws 
of  health,  unless  we  supposed  that  a  sounder  knowledge 
of  them  would  ameliorate  the  condition  of  men  ?  What, 
indeed,  is  the  use  of  the  improvement  of  the  mind  ?  It 
is  far  from  obvious  that  mere  exercise  of  the  intellectual 
faculties  alone  is  a  good.  A  nation  of  Hamlets  (to  take  a 
popular  misconception  of  that  character)  would  be  more 
truly  miserable,  perhaps  more  truly  despicable,  than  a 
nation  of  Bushmen.  By  a  cultivated  mind,  a  mental  train- 
ing, a  sound  education,  we  mean  a  state  of  mind  by  which 
we  shall  become  more  clear  of  our  condition,  of  our  powers, 
of  our  duties  towards  our  fellows,  of  our  true  happiness, 
by  which  we  may  make  ourselves  better  citizens  and  better 
men  —  more  civilised,  in  short.  The  preceding  studies 
have  been  but  a  preparation.  They  have  been  only  to 
strengthen  the  mind,  and  give  it  material  for  the  true  work 
of  education  —  the  inculcation  of  human  duty. 

All  knowledge  is  imperfect,  we  may  almost  say  meaning- 
less, unless  it  tends  to  give  us  sounder  notions  of  our 
human  and  social  interests.  What  we  need  are  clear 
principles  about  the  moral  nature  of  man  as  a  social  being  ; 
about  the  elements  of  human  society  ;  about  the  nature 
and  capacities  of  the  understanding.  We  want  landmarks 
to  guide  us  in  our  search  after  worthy  glides,  or  true 
principles  for  social  or  political  action.  Human  nature  is 
unlike  inorganic  nature  in  this,  that  its  varieties  are  greater, 
and  that  it  shows  continual  change.  The  earth  rolls  round 
the  sun  in  the  same  orbit  now  as  in  infinite  ages  past ; 
but  man  moves  forward  in  a  variable  line  of  progress. 
Age  after  age  develops  into  new  phases.  It  is  a  study  of 
life,  of  growth,  of  variety.  One  generation  shows  one 
faculty  of  human  nature  in  a  striking  degree  ;  the  next 
exhibits  a  different  power.  All,  it  is  true,  leave  their  mark 
upon  all  succeeding  generations,  and  civilisation  flows  on 


14  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

like  a  vast  river,  gathering  up  the  waters  of  its  tributary 
streams.  Hence  it  is  that  civilisation,  being  not  a  fixed  or 
lifeless  thing,  cannot  be  studied  as  a  fixed  or  lifeless  sub- 
ject. We  can  see  it  only  in  its  movement  and  its  growth. 
Except  for  eclipses,  some  conjunctions  of  planets,  and 
minor  changes,  one  year  is  as  good  as  another  to  the 
astronomer ;  but  it  is  not  so  to  the  political  observer.  He 
must  watch  successions,  and  a  wide  field,  and  compare  a 
long  series  of  events.  Hence  it  is  that  in  all  political,  all 
social,  all  human  questions  whatever,  history  is  the  main 
resource  of  the  inquirer. 

To  know  what  is  most  really  natural  to  man  as  a  social 
being,  man  must  be  looked  at  as  he  appears  in  a  succes- 
sion of  ages,  and  in  very  various  conditions.  To  learn  the 
strength  or  scope  of  all  his  capacities  together,  he  must 
be  judged  in  most  successive  periods  in  which  each  in  turn 
was  best  brought  out.  Let  no  one  suppose  that  he  will 
find  all  the  human  institutions  and  faculties  equally  well 
developed,  and  all  in  their  due  proportion  and  order,  by 
simply  looking  at  the  state  of  civilisation  now  actually 
around  us.  It  is  not  a  monstrous  assumption  that  this 
world  of  to-day,  so  full  of  misery  and  discontent,  strife 
and  despair,  ringing  with  cries  of  pain  and  cries  for  aid, 
can  really  embody  .forth  to  us  complete  and  harmonious 
man  ?  Are  there  no  faculties  within  him  yet  fettered,  no 
good  instincts  stifled,  no  high  yearnings  marred  ?  Have 
we  in  this  year  reached  the  pinnacle  of  human  perfection, 
lost  nothing  that  we  once  had,  gained  all  that  we  can  gain  ? 
Surely,  by  the  hopes  within  us,  No  !  But  what  is  missing 
may  often  be  seen  in  the  history  of  the  past.  There,  in 
the  long  struggle  of  man  upwards,  we  may  watch  Humanity 
in  various  moods,  and  see  some  now  forgotten  power, 
capacity,  or  art  yet  destined  to  good  service  in  the  future. 
One  by  one  we  may  light  on  the  missing  links  in  the  chain 


*THE    USE    OF    HISTORY.  15 

which  connects  all  races  and  all  ages  in  one,  or  gather  up 
the  broken  threads  that  must  yet  be  woven  into  the  com- 
plex fabric  of  life. 

There  is  another  side  on  which  history  is  still  more 
necessary  as  a  guide  to  consistent  and  rational  action. 
We  need  to  know  not  merely  what  the  essential  qualities 
of  civilisation  and  of  our  social  nature  really  are ;  but  we 
require  to  know  the  general  course  in  which  they  are  tend- 
ing. The  more  closely  we  look  at  it,  the  more  distinctly 
we  see  that  progress  moves  in  a  clear  and  definite  path  ; 
the  development  of  man  is  not  a  casual  or  arbitrary' motion  : 
it  moves  in  a  regular  and  consistent  plan.  Each  part  is 
unfolded  in  due  order  —  the  whole  expanding  like  a  single 
plant.  More  and  more  steadily  we  see  each  age  working 
out  the  gifts  of  the  last  and  transmitting  its  labours  to  the 
next.  More  and  more  certain  is  our  sense  of  being  strong 
only  as  we  wisely  use  the  materials  and  follow  in  the  track 
provided  by  the  efforts  of  mankind.  Everything  proves 
how  completely  that  influence  surrounds  us.  Take  our 
material  existence  aione.  The  earth's  surface  has  been 
made,  as  we  know  it,  mainly  by  man.  It  would  be  unin- 
habitable by  numbers  but  for  the  long  labours  of  those  who 
cleared  its  primeval  forests,  drained  its  swamps,  first  tilled 
its  rank  soil.  All  the  inventions  on  which  we  depend  for 
existence,  the  instruments  we  use,  were  slowly  worked  out 
by  the  necessities  of  man  in  the  childhood  of  the  race. 
We  can  only  modify  or  add  to  these.  We  could  not 
discard  all  existing  machines  and  construct  an  entirely 
new  set  of  industrial  implements. 

Take  our  political  existence.  There  again  we  are  equally 
confined  in  limits.  Our  country  as  a  political  whole  has 
been  formed  for  us  by  a  long  series  of  wars,  struggles,  and 
common  efforts.  We  could  not  refashion  England,  or 
divide  it  anew,  if  we  tried  for  a  century.  Our  great  towns, 


1 6  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

our  great  roads,  the  local  administrations  of  our  counties, 
were  sketched  out  for  us  by  the  Romans  fifteen  centuries 
since.  Could  we  undo  it  if  we  tried,  and  make  London  a 
country  village,  or  turn  Birmingham  into  the  metropolis  ? 
Some  people  think  they  could  abolish  some  great  institu- 
tion, such  as  the  House  of  Lords  ;  but  few  reformers  in 
this  country  have  proposed  to  abolish  the  entire  British 
Constitution.  For  centuries  we  endured  an  archaic  law  of 
real  property.  Such  as  it  was,  it  was  made  for  us  by  our 
feudal  ancestors  misreading  Roman  texts.  Turn  which- 
ever way  we  will,  we  shall  find  our  political  systems,  laws, 
and  administrations  to  have  been  provided  for  us. 

The  same  holds  good  even  more  strongly  in  all  moral 
and  intellectual  questions.  Are  we  to  suppose  that  whilst 
our  daily  life,  our  industry,  our  laws,  our  customs,  are  con- 
trolled by  the  traditions  and  materials  of  the  past,  our 
thoughts,  our  habits  of  mind,  our  beliefs,  our  moral  sense, 
our  ideas  of  right  and  wrong,  our  hopes  and  aspirations,  are 
not  just  as  truly  formed  by  the  civilisation  in  which  we 
have  been  reared  ?  We  are  indeed  able  to  transform  it,  to 
develop  it,  and  to  give  it  new  life  and  action  ;  but  we  can 
only  do  so  as  we  understand  it.  Without  this  all  efforts, 
reforms,  and  revolutions  are  in  vain.  A  change  is  made, 
but  a  few  years  pass  over,  and  all  the  old  causes  reappear. 
There  was  some  unnoticed  power  which  was  not  touched, 
and  it  returns  in  full  force.  Take  an  instance  from  our 
own  history.  Cromwell  and  his  Ironsides,  who  made  the 
great  English  Revolution,  swept  away  Monarchy,  and 
Church,  and  Peers,  and  thought  they  were  gone  forever. 
Their  great  chief  dead,  the  old  system  returned  like  a 
tide,  and  ended  in  the  orgies  of  Charles  and  James.  The 
Catholic  Church  has  been,  as  it  is  supposed,  staggering  in 
its  last  agonies  now  for  many  centuries.  Luther  believed 
he  had  crushed  it.  Long:  before  his  time  it  seemed 


THE    USE    OF    HISTORY.  I/ 

nothing  but  a  lifeless  mass  of  corruption.  Pope  after 
Pope  has  been  driven  into  exile.  Four  or  five  times  has 
the  Church  seemed  utterly  crushed.  And  yet  here  in  this 
nineteenth  century,  it  puts  forth  all  its  old  pretensions, 
and  covers  its  old  territory. 

In  the  great  French  Revolution  it  seemed,  for  once,  that 
all  extant  institutions  had  been  swept  away.  That  devour- 
ing fire  seemed  to  have  burnt  the  growth  of  ages  to  the 
very  root.  Yet  a  few  years  pass,  and  all  reappear  — 
Monarchy,  Church,  Peers,  Jesuits,  Empire,  and  Praetorian 
guards.  Again  and  again  they  are  overthrown.  Again 
and  again  they  rise  in  greater  pomp  and  pride.  They 
who,  with  courage,  energy,  and  enthusiasm  too  seldom 
imitated,  sixty  years  ago  carried  the  Reform  of  Parliament 
and  swept  away  with  a  strong  hand  abuse  and  privilege, 
believed  that  a  new  era  was  opening  for  their  country. 
What  would  they  think  now  ?  When  they  abolished  rot- 
ten boroughs,  and  test  acts,  and  curtailed  expenditure, 
little  did  they  think  that  sixty  years  would  find  their 
descendants  wrangling  about  Church  Establishments,  ap- 
pealing to  the  House  of  Lords  as  a  bulwark  of  freedom, 
and  spending  ninety  millions  a  year.  The  experience  of 
every  one  who  was  ever  engaged  in  any  public  movement 
whatever  reminds  him  that  every  step  made  in  advance 
seems  too  often  wrung  back  from  him  by  some  silent  and 
unnoticed  power  ;  he  has  felt  enthusiasm  give  way  to. 
despair,  and  hopes  become  nothing  but  recollections. 

What  is  this  unseen  power  which  seems  to  undo  the 
best  human  efforts,  as  if  it  were  some  overbearing  weight 
against  which  no  man  can  long  struggle  ?  What  is  this 
ever-acting  force  which  seems  to  revive  the  dead,  to  re- 
store what  we  destroy,  to  renew  forgotten  watchwords, 
exploded  fallacies,  discredited  doctrines,  and  condemned 
institutions ;  against  which  enthusiasm,  intellect,  truth, 
B 


1 8  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

high  purpose,  and  self-devotion  seem  to  beat  themselves  to 
death  in  vain  ?  It  is  the  Past.  It  is  the  accumulated  wills 
and  works  of  all  mankind  around  us  and  before  us.  It 
is  civilisation.  It  is  that  power  which  to  understand  is 
strength,  which  to  repudiate  is  weakness.  Let  us  not 
think  that  there  can  be  any  real  progress  made  which  is 
not  based  on  a  sound  knowledge  of  the  living  institutions 
and  the  active  wants  of  mankind.  If  we  can  only  act  on 
nature  so  far  as  we  know  its  laws,  we  can  only  influence 
society  so  far  as  we  understand  its  elements  and  ways. 
Let  us  not  delude  ourselves  into  thinking  that  new  prin- 
ciples of  policy  or  social  action  can  be  created  by  them- 
selves or  can  reconstruct  society  about  us.  Those  rough 
maxims,  which  we  are  wont  to  dignify  by  the  name  of 
principles,  may  be,  after  all,  only  crude  formulas  and 
phrases  without  life  or  power.  Only  when  they  have  been 
tested,  analysed,  and  compared  with  other  phases  of  social 
life,  can  we  be  certain  that  they  are  immutable  truths. 
Nothing  but  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  social  system, 
based  upon  a  regular  study  of  its  growth,  can  give  us  the 
power  we  require  to  affect  it.  For  this  end  we  need  one 
thing  above  all  —  we  need  history. 

It  may  be  said  —  all  this  may  be  very  useful  for  states- 
men, or  philosophers,  or  politicians  ;  but  what  is  the  use  of 
this  to  the  bulk  of  the  people  ?  They  are  not  engaged  in 
.solving  political  questions.  The  bulk  of  the  people,  if  they 
are  seeking  to  live  the  lives  of  rational  and  useful  citizens, 
if  they  only  wish  to  do  their  duty  by  their  neighbours,  are 
really  and  truly  politicians.  They  are  solving  political 
problems,  and  are  affecting  society  very  deeply.  A  man 
does  not  need  even  to  be  a  vestryman,  he  need  not  even 
have  one  out  of  the  500,000  votes  for  London,  in  order 
to  exercise  very  great  political  influence.  A  man,  pro- 
vided he  lives  like  an  honest,  thoughtful,  truth-speaking 


THE    USE    OF    HISTORY.  19 

citizen,  is  a  power  in  the  state.  He  is  helping  to  form 
that  which  rules  the  state,  which  rules  statesmen,  and  is 
above  kings,  parliaments,  or  ministers.  He  is  forming 
public  opinion.  It  is  on  this,  a  public  opinion,  wise, 
thoughtful,  and  consistent,  that  the  destinies  of  our  coun- 
try rest,  and  not  on  acts  of  parliament,  or  movements,  or 
institutions. 

It  is  sheer  presumption  to  attempt  to  remodel  existing 
institutions,  without  the  least  knowledge  how  they  were 
formed,  or  whence  they  grew  ;  to  deal  with  social  questions 
without  a  thought  how  society  arose ;  to  construct  a  social 
creed  without  an  idea  of  fifty  creeds  which  have  risen  and 
vanished  before.  Few  men  would,  intentionally,  attempt 
so  much  ;  but  many  do  it  unconsciously.  They  think 
they  are  not  statesmen,  or  teachers,  or  philosophers  ;  but, 
in  one  sense,  they  are.  In  all  human  affairs  there  is  this 
peculiar  quality.  They  are  the'  work  of  the  combined 
labours  of  many.  No  statesman  or  teacher  can  do  any- 
thing alone.  He  must  have  the  minds  of  those  he  is 
to  guide  prepared  for  him.  They  must  concur,  or  he  is 
powerless.  In  reality,  he  is  but  the  expression  of  their 
united  wills  and  thoughts.  Hence  it  is,  I  say,  that  all  men 
need,  in  some  sense,  the  knowledge  and  the  judgment  of 
the  statesman  and  the  social  teacher.  Progress  is  but  the 
result  of  our  joint  public  opinion  ;  and  for  progress  that 
opinion  must  be  enlightened.  '  He  only  destroys  who  can 
replace.'  All  other  progress  than  this  —  one  based  on  the 
union  of  many  minds  and  purposes,  and  a  true  conception 
of  the  future  and  the  past  —  is  transitory  and  delusive. 
Those  who  defy  this  power,  the  man,  the  party,  or  the 
class  who  forget  it,  will  be  beating  themselves  in  vain 
against  a  wall ;  changing,  but  not  improving ;  moving,  but 
not  advancing  ;  rolling,  as  the  poet  says  of  a  turbulent  city, 
like  a  sick  man  on  the  restless  bed  of  pain. 


2O  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

The  value  of  a  knowledge  of  history  being  admitted, 
there  follows  the  complicated  problem  of  how  to  acquire 
it.  There  are  oceans  of  facts,  mountains  of  books.  This 
is  the  question  before  us.  It  is  possible  to  know  some- 
thing of  history  without  a  pedantic  erudition.  Let  a  man 
ask  himself  always  what  he  wants  to  know.  Something 
of  man's  social  nature  ;  something  of  the  growth  of  civili- 
sation. He  needs  to  understand  something  of  the  charac- 
ter of  the  great  races  and  systems  of  mankind.  Let  him 
ask  himself  what  the  long  ages  of  the  early  empires  did  for 
mankind ;  whether  they  established  or  taught  anything ; 
if  fifty  centuries  of  human  skill,  labour,  and  thought  were 
wasted  like  an  autumn  leaf.  Let  him  ask  himself  what 
the  Greeks  taught  or  discovered  :  why  the  Romans  were 
a  noble  race,  and  how  they  printed  their  footmarks  so 
deeply  on  the  earth.  Let  him  ask  what  was  the  original 
meaning  and  life  of  ttiose  great  feudal  institutions  of 
chivalry  and  church,  of  which  we  see  only  the  remnants. 
Let  him  ask  what  was  the  strength,  the  weakness,  and  the 
meaning  of  the  great  revolution  of  Cromwell,  or  the  great 
revolution  in  France.  A  man  may  learn  much  true  history, 
without  any  very  ponderous  books.  Let  him  go  to  the 
museums  and  see  the  pictures,  the  statues,  and  buildings 
of  Egyptian  and  Assyrian  times,  and  try  to  learn  what 
was  the  state  of  society  under  which  men  in  the  far  East 
reached  so  high  a  pitch  of  industry,  knowledge,  and  cul- 
ture, three  thousand  years  before  our  savage  ancestors 
had  learned  to  use  the  plough.  A  man  may  go  to  one  of 
our  Gothic  cathedrals,  and,  seeing  there  the  stupendous 
grandeur  of  its  outline,  the  exquisite  grace  of  its  design, 
the  solemn  expression  upon  the  faces  of  its  old  carved 
or  painted  saints,  kings,  and  priests,  may  ask  himself  if 
the  men  who  built  that  could  be  utterly  barbarous,  false- 
hearted, and  tyrannical ;  or  if  the  power  which  could  bring 


THE    USE    OF    HISTORY.  21 

out  such  noble  qualities  of  the  human  mind  and  heart 
must  not  have  left  its  trace  upon  mankind. 

It  does  not  need  many  books  to  know  something  of  the 
life  of  the  past.  A  man  who  has  mastered  the  lives  in  old 
Plutarch  knows  not  a  little  of  Greek  and  Roman  history. 
A  man  who  has  caught  the  true  spirit  of  the  Middle  Ages 
knows  something  of  feudalism  and  chivalry.  But  is  this 
enough  ?  Far  from  it.  These  desultory  thoughts  must  be 
connected.  These  need  to  be  combined  into  a  whole,  and 
combined  and  used  for  a  purpose.  Above  all,  we  must 
look  on  history  as  a  whole,  trying  to  find  what  each  age 
and  race  has  contributed  to  the  common  stock,  and  how 
and  why  each  followed  in  its  place.  Looked  at  separately, 
all  is  confusion  and  contradiction  :  looked  at  as  a  whole,  a 
common  purpose  appears.  The  history  of  the  human  race 
is  the  history  of  a  growth.  It  can  no  more  be  taken  to 
pieces  than  the  human  frame  can  be  taken  to  pieces. 
Who  would  think  of  making  anything  of  the  body  without 
knowing  whether  it  possessed  a  circulation,  a  nervous 
system,  or  a  skeleton.  History  is  a  living  whole.  If  one 
organ  be  removed,  it  is  nothing  but  a  lifeless  mass.  What 
we  have  to  find  in  it  is  the  relation  and  connection  of  the 
parts.  We  must  learn  how  age  develops  into  age,  how 
country  reacts  upon  country,  how  thought  inspires  action, 
and  action  modifies  thought. 

Once  conceive  that  all  the  greater  periods  of  history 
have  had  a  real  and  necessary  part  to  fulfil  in  creating  the 
whole,  and  we  shall  have  done  more  to  understand  it  than 
if  we  had  studied  some  portion  of  it  with  a  microscope. 
Once  feel  that  all  the  parts  are  needed  for  the  whole,  and 
the  difficulty  of  the  mass  of  materials  vanishes.  We  shall 
come  to  regard  it  as  a  composition  or  a  work  of  art  which 
cannot  be  broken  up  into  fragments  at  pleasure.  We 
should  as  soon  think  of  dividing  it  as  of  taking  a  figure  out 


22  THE    MEANING   OF    HISTORY. 

of  a  great  picture,  or  a  passage  out  of  a  piece  of  music. 
We  all  know  those  noble  choruses  of  Handel,  such  as  that 
'  Unto  us  a  child  is  born,'  and  have  heard  the  opening 
notes  begin  simple,  subdued,  and  slow,  until  they  are 
echoed  back  in  deeper  tones,  choir  answering  to  choir, 
voice  joining  in  with  voice,  growing  fuller  and  stronger 
with  new  and  varying  bursts  of  melody,  until  the  whole 
stream  of  song  swells  into  one  vast  tide  of  harmony,  and 
rolls  on  abounding,  wave  upon  wave  in  majestic  exultation 
and  power.  Something  like  this  complex  harmony  is  seen 
in  the  gathering  parts  of  human  history,  age  taking  up  the 
falling  notes  from  age,  race  joining  with  race  in  answering 
strain,  until  the  separate  parts  are  mingled  in  one,  and 
pour  on  in  one  movement  together. 

There  is  one  mode  in  which  history  may  be  most  easily, 
perhaps  most  usefully,  approached.  Let  him  who  desires 
to  find  profit  in  it,  begin  by  knowing  something  of  the 
lives  of  great  men.  Not  of  those  most  talked  about,  not 
of  names  chosen  at  hazard ;  but  of  the  real  great  ones 
who  can  be  shown  to  have  left  their  mark  upon  distant 
ages.  Know  their  lives,  not  merely  as  interesting  studies 
of  character,  or  as  persons  seen  in  a  drama,  but  as  they 
represent  and  influence  their  age.  Not  for  themselves 
only  must  we  know  them,  but  as  the  expression  and  types 
of  all  that  is  noblest  around  them.  Let  us  know  those 
whom  all  men  cannot  fail  to  recognise  as  great  —  the 
Caesars,  the  Charlemagnes,  the  Alfreds,  the  Cromwells, 
great  in  themselves,  but  greater  as  the  centre  of  the 
efforts  of  thousands. 

We  have  done  much  towards  understanding  the  past 
when  we  have  learned  to  value  and  to  honour  such  men. 
It  is  almost  better  to  know  nothing  of  history  than  to 
know  with  the  narrow  coldness  of  a  pedant  a  record  which 
ought  to  fill  us  with  emotion  and  reverence.  Our  closest 


THE    USE    OF    HISTORY.  23 

friends,  our  earliest  teachers,  our  parents  themselves,  are 
not  more  truly  our  benefactors  than  they.  To  them  we 
owe  what  we  prize  most  —  country,  freedom,  peace,  knowl- 
edge, art,  thought,  and  higher  sense  of  right  and  wrong. 
What  a  tale  of  patience,  courage,  sacrifice,  and  martyrdom 
is  the  history  of  human  progress !  It  affects  us  as  if  we 
were  reading  in  the  diary  of  a  parent  the  record  of  his 
struggles  for  his  children.  For  us  they  toiled,  endured, 
bled,  and  died  ;  that  we  by  their  labour  might  have  rest, 
by  their  thoughts  might  know,  by  their  death  might  live 
happily.  For  whom  did  these  men  work,  if  not  for  us  ? 
Not  for  themselves,  when  they  gave  up  peace,  honour,  life, 
reputation  itself — as  when  the  great  French  republican 
exclaimed,  '  May  my  name  be  accursed,  so  that  France  be 
free ! '  not  for  themselves  they  worked,  but  for  their 
cause,  for  their  fellows,  for  us.  Not  that  they  might  have 
fame,  but  that  they  might  leave  the  world  better  than  they 
found  it.  This  supported  Milton  in  his  old  age,  blind, 
poor,  and  dishonoured,  when  he  poured  out  his  spirit  in 
solitude,  full  of  grace,  tenderness,  and  hope,  amidst  the 
ruin  of  all  he  loved  and  the  obscene  triumph  of  all  he 
despised.  It  supported  Dante,  the  poet  of  Florence,  when 
an  outlaw  and  an  exile  he  was  cast  off  by  friends  and 
countrymen,  and  wandered  about  begging  his  bread  from 
city  to  city,  pondering  the  great  thoughts  which  live 
throughout  all  Europe.  This  spirit,  too,  was  in  one,  the 
noblest  victim  of  the  French  Revolution,  the  philosopher 
Condorcet  ;  who,  condemned,  hunted  to  death,  devoted 
the  last  few  days  of  his  life  to  serene  thought  of  the  past, 
and,  whilst  the  pursuers  were  on  his  track,  wrote  in  his 
hiding-place  that  noble  sketch  of  the  progress  of  the 
human  race. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE   CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY. 

LET  us  now  try  to  sketch  the  outline  of  this  story,  link 
century  to  century,  continent  to  continent,  and  judge  the 
share  each  has  in  the  common  work  of  civilisation.  To 
do  so,  we  must  go  back  to  ages  long  before  records  began. 
It  is  but  of  the  latter  and  the  shorter  portion  of  the  dura- 
tion of  progress,  that  any  record  has  been  made  or  pre- 
served. Yet  for  a  general  view,  sufficient  materials  of 
certain  knowledge  exist.  If  we  write  the  biography  of  a 
man  we  do  not  begin  with  the  year  of  his  life  in  which  his 
diary  opens ;  we  seek  to  know  his  parentage,  education, 
and  early  association.  To  understand  him  we  must  do  so. 
So,  too,  the  biography  of  mankind  must  not  confine  itself 
to  the  eras  of  chronological  tables,  and  of  recorded  events. 
In  all  large  instances  the  civilisation  of  an  epoch  or  a 
people  has  a  certain  unity  in  it  —  their  philosophy,  their 
policy,  their  habits,  and  their  religion  must  more  or  less 
accord,  and  all  depend  at  last  upon  the  special  habit  of 
their  minds.  It  is  this  central  form  of  belief  which  deter- 
mines all  the  rest.  Separately  no  item  which  makes  up 
their  civilisation  as  a  whole,  can  be  long  or  seriously 
changed.  It  is  what  a  man  believes,  which  makes  him  act 
as  he  does.  Thus  shall  we  see  that,  as  their  reasoning 
powers  develop,  all  else  develops  likewise  ;  their  science, 
their  art  break  up  or  take  new  forms  ;  their  system  of 
society  expands ;  their  life,  their  morality,  and  their  relig- 
ion gradually  are  dissolved  and  reconstructed. 

24 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  25 

Let  us,  then,  place  ourselves  back  in  imagination  at  a 
period  when  the  whole  surface  of  the  earth  was  quite  un- 
like what  it  is  now.  Let  us  suppose  it  as  it  was  after  the 
last  great  geologic  change  —  the  greater  portion  of  its  area 
covered  with  primeval  forests,  vast  swamps,  dense  jungles, 
moors,  prairies,  and  arid  deserts.  We  must  not  suppose 
that  the  earth  had  always  the  same  face  as  now.  Such  as 
it  is,  it  has  been  made  by  man  ;  the  rich  pasturages  and 
open  plains  have  all  been  created  by  his  toil  —  even  the 
grain,  and  fruits,  and  flowers  that  grow  upon  its  soil  have 
been  made  what  they  are  by  his  care.  Their  originals 
were  what  we  now  should  regard  as  small,  valueless,  in- 
sipid berries  or  weeds.  As  yet  the  now  teeming  valleys 
of  the  great  rivers,  such  as  the  Nile,  or  the  Euphrates,  or 
the  Po,  were  wildernesses  or  swamps.  The  rich  meadows 
of  our  own  island  were  marshes  ;  where  its  cornfields  stand 
now,  were  trackless  forests  or  salt  fens.  Such  countries 
as  Holland  were  swept  over  by  every  tide  of  the  sea,  and 
such  countries  as  Switzerland,  and  Norway,  and  large  parts 
of  America,  or  Russia,  were  submerged  beneath  endless 
pine-woods.  And  through  these  forests  and  wastes  ranged 
countless  races  of  animals,  many,  doubtless,  long  extinct, 
in  variety  and  numbers  more  than  we  can  even  conceive. 

Where  in  this  terrible  world  was  man  ?  Scanty  in 
number,  confined  to  a  few  favourable  spots,  dispersed,  and 
alone,  man  sustained  a  precarious  existence,  not  yet  the 
lord  of  creation,  inferior  to  many  quadrupeds  in  strength, 
only  just  superior  to  them  in  mind  —  nothing  but  the  first 
of  the  brutes.  As  are  the  lowest  of  all  savages  now,  no 
doubt  even  lower,  man  once  was.  Conceive  what  Robinson 
Crusoe  would  have  been  had  his  island  been  a  dense  jungle 
overrun  with  savage  beasts,  without  his  gun,  or  his  knife, 
or  his  knowledge,  with  nothing  but  his  human  hand  and 
his  human  brain.  Ages  have  indeed  passed  since  then  — 


26  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

at  least  some  twenty  thousand  years  —  possibly  twice  or 
thrice  twenty  thousand.  But  they  should  not  be  quite  for- 
gotten, and  all  recollection  perish  of  that  dark  time  when 
man  waged  a  struggle  for  life  or  death  with  nature.  Let 
us  be  just  to  those  who  fought  that  fight  with  the  brutes, 
hunted  down  and  exterminated  step  by  step  the  races  too 
dangerous  to  man,  and  cleared  the  ground  of  these  mon- 
strous rivals.  Every  nation  has  its  primeval  heroes,  whose 
hearts  quailed  not  before  the  lion  or  the  dragon  :  its  Nim- 
rod,  a  mighty  hunter  before  the  Lord ;  its  Hercules,  whose 
club  smote  the  serpent  Hydra  ;  its  Odin,  who  slew  mon- 
sters. The  forests,  moreover,  had  to  be  cleared.  Step  by 
step  man  won  his  way  into  the  heart  of  those  dark  jungles ; 
slowly  the  rank  vegetation  was  swept  off,  here  and  there  a 
space  was  cleared,  here  and  there  a  plain  was  formed  which 
left  a  patch  of  habitable  soil. 

Everywhere  man  began  as  a  hunter,  without  implements, 
without  clothing,  without  homes,  perhaps  without  the  use 
of  fire.  Man's  supremacy  over  the  brutes  was  first  asserted 
when  his  mind  taught  him  how  to  make  the  rude  bow,  or 
the  flint  knife,  or  to  harden  clay  or  wood  by  heat.  But 
not  only  were  all  the  arts  and  uses  of  life  yet  to  be  found, 
but  all  the  human  institutions  had  to  be  formed.  As  yet 
language,  family,  marriage,  property,  tribe,  were  not,  or 
only  were  in  germ.  A  few  cries  assisted  by  gesture,  a 
casual  association  of  the  sexes,  a  dim  trace  of  parentage 
or  brotherhood,  a  joint  tenure  by  those  who  dwelt  together, 
were  all  that  was.  Language,  as  we  know  it,  has  been 
slowly  built  up,  stage  after  stage,  by  the  instinct  of  the 
entire  race.  Necessity  led  to  new  sounds,  which  use  de- 
veloped ;  sounds  became  words,  words  were  worked  into 
sentences,  and  half-brutish  cries  grew  into  intelligible 
speech.  Our  earliest  teachers  were  those  whose  higher 
instincts  first  taught  men  to  unite  in  permanent  pairs,  to 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  2/ 

group  the  children  of  one  home,  to  form  into  parties  and 
companies,  to  clothe  themselves,  and  put  checks  upon  the 
violent  passions.  They  who  first  drew  savage  man  out  of 
the  life  of  unbridled  instinct  and  brutal  loneliness  ;  who 
founded  the  practices  of  personal  decency  and  cleanliness  ; 
who  first  taught  men  to  be  faithful  and  tender  to  the  young 
and  the  old,  the  woman,  and  the  mother  ;  who  first  brought 
these  wild  hunters  together,  and  made  them  trust  each 
other  and  their  chief  —  these  were  the  first  great  bene- 
factors of  mankind  ;  this  is  the  beginning  of  the  history  of 
the  race. 

When  such  was  the  material  and  moral  condition  of 
man,  what  was  his  intellectual  condition  ?  what  were  his 
knowledge,  his  worship,  and  his  religion  ?  Turn  to  the 
earliest  traditions  of  men,  to  the  simple  ideas  of  child- 
hood, and  especially  to  the  savage  tribes  we  know,  and 
we  have  the  answer.  Man's  intellect  was  far  feebler  than 
his  activity  or  his  feelings.  He  knew  nothing,  he  rested 
in  the  first  imagination.  He  reasoned  on  nothing,  he 
supposed  everything.  He  looked  upon  nature,  and  saw 
it  full  of  life,  motion,  and  strength.  He  knew  what 
struggles  he  had  with  it ;  he  felt  it  often  crush  him,  he 
felt  he  could  often  mould  it ;  and  he  thought  that  all, 
brutes,  plants,  rivers,  storms,  forests,  and  mountains,  were 
powers,  living,  feeling,  and  acting  like  himself.  Do  not 
the  primeval  legends,  the  fairy  tales  of  all  nations,  show  it 
to  us  ?  Does  not  the  child  punish  its  doll,  and  the  savage 
defy  the  thunder,  and  the  horse  start  at  a  gnarled  oak 
swaying  its  boughs  like  arms  in  the  wind  ?  Man  then 
looked  out  upon  nature,  and  thought  it  a  living  thing  — 
a  simple  belief  which  answered  all  questions.  He  knew 
nothing  of  matter,  or  elements,  or  laws.  His  celestial 
and  his  terrestrial  philosophy  was  summed  up  in  this  — 
things  act  so  because  they  choose.  He  never  asked  why 


28  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

the  sun  or  moon  rose  and  set.  They  were  bright  beings 
who  walked  their  own  paths  when  and  as  they  pleased. 
He  never  thought  why  a  volcano  smoked,  or  a  river  over- 
flowed ;  or  thought  only  that  the  one  was  wroth  and 
roared,  and  that  the  other  had  started  in  fury  from  his  bed. 

And  what  was  his  religion  ?  What  could  it  but  be  ? 
Affection  for  the  fruits  and  flowers  of  the  earth — dread 
and  prostration  before  the  terrible  in  nature  —  worship 
of  the  bright  sun,  or  sheltering  grove,  or  mountain  —  in 
a  word,  the  adoration  of  nature,  the  untutored  impulse 
towards  the  master  powers  around.  As  yet  nothing  was 
fixed,  nothing  common.  Each  worshipped  in  love  or 
dread  what  most  seized  his  fancy  ;  each  family  had  its 
own  fetishes  ;  each  tribe  its  stones  or  mountains  ;  often  it 
worshipped  its  own  dead  —  friends  who  had  begun  a  new 
existence  :  who  appeared  to  them  in  dreams,  and  were 
thought  to  haunt  the  old  familiar  spots.  Such  was  their 
religion,  the  unguided  faith  of  childhood,  exaggerating 
all  the  feelings  and  sympathies,  stimulating  love,  and 
hatred,  and  movement,  and  destruction,  but  leaving  every- 
thing vague,  giving  no  fixity,  no  unity,  no  permanence. 
In  such  a  condition,  doubtless,  man  passed  through  many 
thousand  years :  tribe  struggling  with  tribe  in  endless 
battles  for  their  hunting  grounds  ;  often,  we  may  fear, 
devouring  their  captives ;  without  any  fixed  abode,  or 
definite  association,  or  material  progress  ;  yet  gradually 
forming  the  various  arts  and  institutions  of  life,  gradually 
learning  the  use  of  clothes,  of  metals,  of  implements,  of 
speech  —  a  race  whose  life  depended  solely  upon  the 
chase,  whose  only  society  was  the  tribe,  whose  religion 
was  the  worship  of  natural  objects. 

In  this  first  struggle  with  nature,  man  was  not  long 
quite  alone.  Slowly  he  won  over  to  his  side  one  or  two 
of  the  higher  animals.  This  wonderful  victory  assured 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  2Q 

his  ultimate  ascendancy.  The  dog  was  won  from  his 
wolf-like  state  to  join  and  aid  in  the  chase.  The  horse 
bowed  his  strength  in  generous  submission  to  a  master. 
We  do  not  reflect  enough  upon  the  efforts  that  this  cost. 
We  are  forgetful  of  the  wonders  of  patience,  gentleness, 
sympathy,  sagacity,  and  nerve,  which  were  required  for 
the  first  domestication  of  animals.  We  may  reflect  upon 
the  long  centuries  of  care  which  were  needed  to  change 
the  very  nature  of  these  noble  brutes,  without  whom  we 
should  indeed  be  helpless.  By  degrees  the  ox,  the  sheep, 
the  goat,  the  hog,  the  camel,  and  the  ass,  with  horse  and 
dog,  were  reared  by  man,  formed  part  of  his  simple 
family,  and  became  the  lower  portion  of  the  tribe.  Their 
very  natures,  their  external  forms,  were  changed.  Milk 
and  its  compounds  formed  the  basis  of  food.  The  hun- 
ter's life  became  less  precarious,  less  rambling,  less 
violent.  In  short,  the  second  great  stage  of  human  exist- 
ence began,  and  pastoral  life  commenced. 

With  the  institution  of  pastoral  —  a  modified  form  of 
nomad  —  life,  a  great  advance  was  made  in  civilisation. 
Larger  tribes  could  now  collect,  for  there  was  now  no 
lack  of  food ;  tribes  gathered  into  a  horde  ;  something 
like  society  began.  It  had  its  leaders,  its  elders,  perhaps 
its  teachers,  poets,  and  wise  men.  Men  ceased  to  rove 
for  ever.  They  stayed  upon  a  favourable  pasture  for  long 
periods  together.  Next,  property  —  that  is,  instruments, 
valuables,  and  means  of  subsistence  —  began  ;  flocks  and 
herds  accumulated ;  men  were  no  longer  torn  daily  by 
the  wants  of  hunger  ;  and  leisure,  repose,  and  peace  were 
possible.  The  women  were  relieved  from  the  crushing 
toil  of  the  past.  The  old  were  no  longer  abandoned  or 
neglected  through  want.  Reflection,  observation,  thought 
began  ;  and  with  thought,  religion.  As  life  became  more 
fixed,  worship  became  less  vague  and  more  specific. 


3O  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

Some  fixed,  great  powers  alone  were  adored,  chiefly  the 
host  of  heaven,  the  stars,  the  moon,  and  the  great  sun 
itself.  Then  some  elder,  freed  from  toil  or  war,  meditat- 
ing on  the  world  around  him,  as  he  watched  the  horde 
start  forth  at  the  rising  of  the  sun,  the  animals  awakening 
and  nature  opening  beneath  his  rays,  first  came  to  think 
all  nature  moved  at  the  will  of  that  sun  himself,  per- 
haps even  of  some  mysterious  power  of  whom  that  sun 
was  but  the  image.  From  this  would  rise  a  regular  wor- 
ship common  to  the  whole  horde,  uniting  them  together, 
explaining  their  course  of  life,  stimulating  their  powers 
of  thought. 

With  this  some  kind  of  knowledge  commenced.  Their 
vast  herds  and  flocks  needed  to  be  numbered,  distin- 
guished, and  separated.  Arithmetic  began ;  the  mode  of 
counting,  of  adding  and  subtracting,  was  slowly  worked 
out.  The  horde's  course,  also,  must  be  directed  by  the 
seasons  and  the  stars.  Hence  astronomy  began.  The 
course  of  the  sun  was  steadily  observed,  the  recurrence  of 
the  seasons  noted.  Slowly  the  first  ideas  of  order,  regu- 
larity, and  permanence  arose.  The  world  was  no  longer  a 
chaos  of  conflicting  forces.  The  earth  had  its  stated 
times,  governed  by  the  all-ruling  sun.  Now,  too,  the 
horde  had  a  permanent  existence.  Its  old  men  could 
remember  the  story  of  its  wanderings  and  the  deeds  of  its 
mighty  ones,  and  would  tell  them  to  the  young  when  the 
day  was  over.  Poetry,  narrative,  and  history  had  begun. 
Leisure  brought  the  use  of  fresh  implements.  Metals 
were  found  and  worked.  The  loom  was  invented  ;  the 
wheeled  car  came  into  use ;  the  art  of  the  smith,  the 
joiner,  and  the  boat-builder.  New  arts  required  a  sub- 
division of  labour,  and  division  of  labour  required  orderly 
rule.  Society  had  begun.  A  greater  step  was  yet  at 
hand.  Around  some  sacred  mountain  or  grave,  in  some 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  3! 

more  favoured  spot,  where  the  horde  would  longest  halt  or 
oftenest  return,  some  greater  care  to  clear  the  ground,  to 
protect  the  pasture,  and  to  tend"  the  plants  was  shown  ; 
some  patches  of  soil  were  scratched  to  grow  some  useful 
grains,  some  wild  corn  ears  were  cultivated  into  wheat, 
the  earth  began  to  be  tilled.  Man  passed  into  the 
third  great  stage  of  material,  existence,  and  agriculture 
began. 

Agriculture  once  commenced,  a  new  era  was  at  hand. 
Now  organised  society  was  possible.  We  must  regard 
this  stage  as  the  greatest  effort  towards  progress  ever 
accomplished  by  mankind.  We  must  remember  how 
much  had  to  be  learnt,  how  many  arts  had  to  be  invented, 
before  the  savage  hunter  could  settle  down  into  the  peace- 
ful, the  provident,  and  the  intelligent  husbandman.  What 
is  all  our  vaunted  progress  to  this  great  step  ?  What  are 
all  our  boasted  inventions  compared  with  the  first  great 
discoveries  of  man,  the  spinning-wheel  and  loom,  the 
plough,  the  clay-vessel,  the  wheel,  the  boat,  the  bow,  the 
hatchet,  and  the  forge  ?  Surely,  if  we  reflect,  our  inven- 
tions are  chiefly  modes  of  multiplying  or  saving  force  ; 
these  were  the  transformations  of  substances,  or  the  inter- 
change of  force.  Ours  are,  for  the  most  part,  but  expan- 
sions of  the  first  idea  ;  these  are  the  creations. 

Since  it  is  with  agriculture  solely  that  organised  society 
begins,  it  is  with  justice  that  the  origin  of  civilisation  is 
always  traced  to  those  great  plains  where  alone  agriculture 
was  then  possible.  It  was  in  the  basins  of  the  great  Asian 
rivers,  the  Euphrates,  the  Tigris,  the  Indus,  the  Ganges, 
the  Yang-tse-kiang,  and  in  that  of  the  Nile,  that  fixed 
societies  began.  There,  where  irrigation  is  easy,  the  soil 
rich,  the  country  open,  cultivation  arose,  and  with  cul- 
tivation of  the  soil  the  accumulation  of  its  produce,  and 
with  more  easy  sustenance,  leisure,  thought,  and  obser- 


32  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

vation.  Use  taught  man  to  distinguish  between  matter 
and  life,  man  and  brute,  thought  and  motion.  Men's  eyes 
were  opened,  and  they  saw  that  nature  was  not  alive,  and 
had  no  will.  They  watched  the  course  of  the  sun,  and  saw 
that  it  moved  in  fixed  ways.  They  watched  the  sea,  and 
saw  that  it  rose  and  fell  by  tides.  Then,  too,  they  needed 
knowledge  and  they  needed  teachers.  They  needed  men 
to  measure  their  fields,  their  barns,  to  teach  them  to  build 
strongly,  to  calculate  the  seasons  for  them,  to  predict  the 
signs  of  the  weather,  to  expound  the  will  of  the  great 
powers  who  ruled  them.  Thus  slowly  rose  the  notion  of 
gods,  the  unseen  rulers  of  these  powers  of  earth  and  sky  — 
a  god  of  the  sea,  of  the  river,  of  the  sky,  of  the  sun  ;  and 
between  them  and  their  gods  rose  the  first  priests,  the 
ministers  and  interpreters  of  their  will,  and  polytheism  and 
theocracies  began. 

Thus  simply  amidst  these  great  settled  societies  of  the 
plain  began  the  great  human  institution,  the  priesthood  — 
at  first  only  wiser  elders  who  had  some  deeper  knowledge 
of  the  arts  of  settled  life.  Gradually  knowledge  advanced  ; 
knowledge  of  the  seasons  and  of  the  stars  or  of  astronomy, 
of  enumeration  or  arithmetic,  of  measurement  or  geometry, 
of  medicine  and  surgery,  of  building,  of  the  arts,  of 
music,  of  poetry  ;  gradually  this  knowledge  became  deposi- 
ted in  the  hands  of  a  few,  was  accumulated  and  transmitted 
from  father  to  son.  The  intellect  asserted  its  power,  and 
the  rule  over  a  peaceful  and  industrious  race  slowly  passed 
into  the  hands  of  a  priesthood,  or  an  educated  and  sacred 
class.  These  were  the  men  who  founded  the  earliest  form 
of  civilised  existence  ;  the  most  complete,  the  most  endur- 
ing, the  most  consistent  of  all  human  societies,  the  great 
theocracies  of  religious  societies  of  Asia  and  Egypt.  Thus 
for  thousands  of  years  before  the  earliest  records  of  history, 
in  all  the  great  plains  of  Asia  and  along  the  Nile,  nations 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  33 

flourished  in  a  high  and  elaborate  form  of  civilisation.  We 
will  examine  one  only,  the  best  known  to  us,  the  type,  the 
earliest  and  the  greatest  —  the  Egyptian. 

The  task  to  be  accomplished  was  immense.  It  was 
nothing  less  than  the  foundation  of  permanent  and  organ- 
ised society.  Till  this  was  done  all  was  in  danger.  All 
knowledge  might  be  lost,  the  arts  might  perish,  the  civil 
community  might  break  up.  Hitherto  there  had  been  no 
permanence,  no  union,  no  system.  What  was  needed  was 
to  form  the  intellectual  and  material  framework  of  a  fixed 
nation.  And  this  the  Egyptian  priesthood  undertook.  The 
spot  was  favourable  to  the  attempt.  In  that  great,  rich 
plain,  walled  off  on  all  sides  by  the  desert  or  by  the  sea,  it 
was  possible  to  found  a  society  at  once  industrial,  peaceful, 
and  settled.  They  needed  judges  to  direct  them,  teachers 
to  instruct  them,  men  of  science  to  help  them,  governors  to 
rule  them,  preachers  to  admonish  them,  physicians  to  heal 
them,  artists  to  train  them,  and  priests  to  sacrifice  for 
them.  To  meet  these  wants  a  special  order  of  men  spon- 
taneously arose,  by  whose  half-conscious  efforts  a  complete 
system  of  society  was  gradually  and  slowly  formed.  In 
their  hands  was  concentrated  the  whole  intellectual  product 
of  ages  ;  this  they  administered  for  the  common  good. 

Gradually  by  their  care  there  arose  a  system  of  regular 
industry.  To  this  end  they  divided  out  by  their  superior 
skill  all  the  arts  and  trades  of  life.  Each  work  was  appor- 
tioned, each  art  had  its  subordinate  arts.  Then  as  a  mode 
of  perpetuating  skill  in  crafts,  to  insure  a  sound  apprentice- 
ship of  every  labour,  they  caused  or  enabled  each  man's 
work  to  become  hereditary  within  certain  broad  Jimits,  and 
thus  created  or  sanctioned  a  definite  series  of  castes.  To 
give  sanction  to  the  whole,  they  consecrated  each  labour, 
and  made  each  workman's  toil  a  part  of  his  religious  duty. 
Then  they  organised  a  scheme  of  general  education.  They 


34  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

provided  a  system  of  teaching  common  to  all,  adapted  to 
the  work  of  each.  They  provided  for  the  special  education 
of  the  sacred  class  in  the  whole  circle  of  existing  knowl- 
edge ;  they  collected  observations,  they  treasured  up  dis- 
coveries, and  recorded  events.  Next  they  organised  a 
system  of  government.  They  established  property,  they 
divided  out  the  land,  they  set  up  landmarks,  they  devised 
rules  for  its  tenure,  they  introduced  law,  and  magistrates, 
and  governors ;  provinces  were  divided  into  districts, 
towns,  and  villages  ;  violence  was  put  down,  a  strict  police 
exercised,  regular  taxes  imposed.  Next  they  organised  a 
system  of  morality ;  the  social,  the  domestic,  and  the 
personal  duties  were  minutely  defined  ;  practices  relating 
to  health,  cleanliness,  and  temperance  were  enforced  by 
religious  obligations  :  every  act  of  life,  every  moment* of 
existence,  was  made  a  part  of  sacred  duty.  Lastly,  they 
organised  national  life  by  a  vast  system  of  common  relig- 
ious rites,  having  imposing  ceremonies  which  awakened 
the  imagination  and  kindled  the  emotions,  bound  up  the 
whole  community  into  an  united  people,  and  gave  stability 
to  their  national  existence,  by  the  awful  sense  of  a  common 
and  mysterious  belief. 

If  we  want  to  know  what  such  a  system  of  life  was 
like,  let  us  go  into  some  museum  of  Egyptian  antiquities, 
where  we  may  see  representations  of  their  mode  of  ex- 
istence carved  upon  their  walls.  There  we  may  see  nearly 
all  the  arts  of  life  as  we  know  them  —  weaving  and  spin- 
ning, working  in  pottery,  glass-blowing,  building,  carving, 
and  painting ;  ploughing,  sowing,  threshing,  and  gathering 
into  barns ;  boating,  irrigation,  fishing,  wine-pressing, 
dancing,  singing,  and  playing  —  a  vast  community,  in 
short,  orderly,  peaceful,  and  intelligent  ;  capable  of  gigan- 
tic works  and  of  refined  arts,  before  which  we  are  lost  in 
wonder ;  a  civilised  community  busy  and  orderly  as  a  hive 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  35 

of  bees,  amongst  whom  every  labour  and  function  was 
arranged  in  perfect  harmony  and  distinctness  :  all  this  may 
be  seen  upon  monuments  5000  years  old. 

Here,  then,  we  have  civilisation  itself.  All  the  arts  of 
life  had  been  brought  to  perfection,  and  indelibly  im- 
planted on  the  mind  of  men  so  that  they  could  never  be 
utterly  lost.  All  that  constitutes  orderly  government,  the 
institutions  of  society,  had  been  equally  graven  into  human 
existence.  A  check  had  been  placed  upon  the  endless 
and  desultory  warfare  of  tribes ;  and  great  nations  existed. 
The  ideas  of  domestic  life,  marriage,  filial  duty,  care  for 
the  aged  and  the  dead,  had  become  a  second  nature.  The 
wholesome  practices  of  social  life,  of  which  we  think  so 
lightly,  had  all  been  invented  and  established.  The  prac- 
tice of  regular  holidays,  social  gatherings,  and  common 
celebrations  began  —  the  record  and  division  of  past  ages, 
the  exact  times  of  the  seasons,  of  the  year,  the  months 
and  its  festivals  ;  the  great  yet  little-prized  institution  of 
the  week.  Nor  were  the  gains  to  thought  less.  In  the 
peaceful  rolling  on  of  those  primeval  ages,  observations 
had  been  stored  up  by  an  unbroken  succession  of  priests, 
without  which  science  never  would  have  existed.  It  was 
no  small  feat  in  science  first  to  have  determined  the  exact 
length  of  the  year.  .  It  needed  observations  stretching  over 
a  cycle  of  1500  years.  But  the  Egyptian  priests  had 
enumerated  the  stars,  and  could  calculate  for  centuries  in 
advance  the  times  of  their  appearance.  They  possessed 
the  simpler  processes  of  arithmetic  and  geometry  ;  they 
knew  something  of  chemistry,  and  much  of  botany,  and 
even  a  little  of  surgery.  There  was  one  invention  yet 
more  astonishing  ;  the  Egyptians  invented,  the  Phoenicians 
popularised,  the  art  of  writing,  and  transmitted  the  alpha- 
bet —  our  alphabet  —  to  the  Greeks.  A  truly  amazing 
intellectual  effort  was  required  for  the  formation  of  the 


36  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

alphabet ;  not  to  shape  the  forms,  but  first  to  conceive  that 
the  complex  sounds  we  utter  could  be  classified,  and  re- 
duced down  to  those  simple  elements  we  call  the  letters. 
We  can  imagine  hardly  any  effort  of  abstract  thought 
more  difficult  than  this,  and  certainly  none  more  essential 
to  the  progress  of  the  human  mind. 

They  had  indeed  great  minds  who  did  all  this  ;  for  they 
did  not  so  much  promote  civilisation  as  create  it.  Never 
perhaps  before  or  since  has  any  order  of  men  received  this 
universal  culture  ;  never  perhaps  has  any  order  shown  this 
many-sided  activity  and  strength.  Never  before  or  since 
has  such  power  been  concentrated  in  the  same  hands  — 
the  entire  moral  and  material  control  over  society.  They 
had  great  minds,  great  souls  also,  who  could  conceive  and 
carry  through  such  a  task — greater  perhaps  in  this  that 
they  did  not  care  to  celebrate  themselves  for  posterity,  but 
passed  away  when  their  work  was  done,  contented  to  have 
seen  it  done,  as  Moses  did  when  he  went  up  alone  to  die 
in  secret,  that  no  man  might  know  or  worship  at  his  tomb. 
The  debt  we  owe  these  men  and  these  times  is  great.  It 
is  said  that  man  learns  more  in  the  first  year  of  his  child- 
hood than  in  any  year  subsequently  of  his  life.  And  in 
this  long  childhood  of  the  world,  how  many  things  were 
learnt  !  Is  it  clear  that  they  could  have  been  learnt  in  any 
other  way  ?  Caste,  in  its  decline,  is  the  most  degrading 
of  human  institutions.  It  is  doubtful  if  without  it  the 
acts  of  life  could  have  been  taught  and  preserved  in  those 
unsettled  ages  of  war  and  migration.  We  rebel  justly 
against  all  priestly  tyranny  over  daily  life  and  customs. 
It  is  probable  that  without  these  sanctions  of  religion  and 
law,  the  rules  of  morality,  of  decency,  and  health  could 
never  have  been  imposed  upon  the  lawless  instincts  of 
mankind.  We  turn  with  repugnance  from  the  monotony 
of  those  unvarying  ages,  and  of  that  almost  stagnant 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  37 

civilisation  ;  but  are  we  sure  that  without  it,  it  would  have 
been  possible  to  collect  the  observations  of  distant  ages, 
and  the  records  of  dynasties  and  eras  on  which  all  science 
and  all  history  rest  ?  would  it  have  been  possible  to  pro- 
vide a  secure  and  tranquil  field  in  which  the  slow  growth 
of  language,  art,  and  thought  could  have  worked  out, 
generation  after  generation,  their  earliest  and  most  diffi- 
cult result  ? 

No  form  of  civilisation  has  ever  endured  so  long  ;  its 
consequences  are  stamped  deeply  still  upon  our  daily  life  ; 
yet  the  time  came  when  even  these  venerable  systems 
must  die. 

Their  work  was  done,  and  it  was  time  for  them  to  pass 
away.  Century  after  century  had  gone  by,  teaching  the 
same  lessons,  but  adding  nothing  new.  Human  life  began 
to  be  stifled  in  these  primeval  forms.  The  whole  empire 
of  the  priests  grew  evil  and  corrupt.  We  know  them 
chiefly  in  their  decline,  when  kings  and  conquerors  had 
usurped  and  perverted  the  patient  energies  of  these  long- 
tutored  peoples.  These  great  societies  passed  from  indus- 
trial and  social  communities  into  stupendous  tyrannies, 
made  up  of  cruelty  and  pride.  It  was  the  result  of  the 
great  and  fatal  error  which  lay  beneath  the  whole  priestly 
system.  They  had  misconceived  their  strength  and  their 
knowledge.  They  had  undertaken  to  organise  society 
whilst  their  own  knowledge  was  feeble  and  imperfect. 
They  had  tried  to  establish  the  rule  of  mind,  of  all  rules 
the  most  certainly  destined  to  fail ;  and  they  based  that 
rule  upon  error  and  misconception.  They  pretended  to 
govern  society  instead  of  confining  themselves  to  the  only 
possible  task,  to  teach  it.  They  who  had  begun  by  secur- 
ing progress,  now  were  its  worst  obstacles.  They  who 
began  to  rule  by  the  right  of  intelligence,  now  dreaded 
and  crushed  intelligence.  They  fell  as  every  priesthood 


38  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

has  fallen  which  has  ever  based  its  claims  upon  imperfect 
knowledge,  or  pretended  to  command  in  the  practical 
affairs  of  life.  Yet  there  was  only  one  way  in  which  the 
nightmare  of  this  intellectual  and  social  oppression  could 
be  shaken  off,  and  these  strong  systems  broken  up.  It 
was  no  doubt  by  the  all-powerful  instinct  of  conquest,  and 
by  the  growth  of  vast  military  monarchies,  that  the  change 
was  accomplished.  Those  antique  societies  of  peace  and 
industry  degenerated  at  last  into  conquering  empires  ;  and, 
during  the  thousand  years  which  precede  the  Persian 
empire,  Asia  was  swept  from  side  to  side  by  the  armies 
of  Assyrian,  Median,  Babylonian,  and  Egyptian  conquerors. 
Empire  after  empire  rose  and  fell  with  small  result,  save 
that  they  broke  the  death-like  sleep  of  ages,  and  brought 
distant  people  from  the  ends  of  the  earth  into  contact  with 
each  other. 

The  researches  and  discoveries  of  our  own  generation 
have  thrown  much  light  on  these  Asiatic  kingdoms,  and 
many  names  and  events  have  been  sufficiently  identified. 
But  no  regular  and  authentic  history  of  the  tracts  enclosed 
between  the  Black  Sea,  the  Caspian,  the  Mediterranean, 
and  the  Persian  Gulf  has  yet  become  possible  ;  nor  has  our 
general  conception  of  the  civilisation  of  these  Asiatic  mon- 
archies been  modified  in  essential  features.  From  time  to 
time  we  find  traces  of  efforts  made  by  independent  peo- 
ples, Arabs,  Syrians,  Phoenicians,  and  Jews,  to  free  them- 
selves from  the  pressure  of  the  regime  of  caste  and  of  the 
military  empires.  Of  these  efforts  the  Jewish  nationality 
is,  from  the  moral  and  spiritual  point  of  view,  far  the  most 
important.  From  the  practical  and  material  point  of  view, 
the  most  important  is  undoubtedly  the  Phoenician.  These 
two  most  interesting  peoples  may  be  traced  for  eight  or 
ten  centuries  before  they  were  both  absorbed  in  the  Per- 
sian empire,  making  heroic  and  persevering  efforts  to  found 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  39 

a  new  type  of  society,  or  to  develop  the  arts  and  resources 
of  civilised  life.  The  Jewish  nation,  though  its  subsequent 
influence  on  the  conscience  and  imagination  of  mankind 
has  made  it  of  such  transcendant  interest  to  us  in  a  later 
age,  was  too  small,  too  feebly  seated,  and  with  too  little  of 
practical  genius,  to  produce  any  decisive  effect  on  the  gen- 
eral course  of  civil  organisation. 

That  very  remarkable  people,  the  Phoenicians,  did  more 
to  that  end.  Their  wonderful  enterprise  and  indomitable 
nature,  their  seats  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  and 
the  possession  of  maritime  strongholds,  with  their  unique 
aptitude  for  the  sea  in  the  early  ages,  enabled  them  to 
play  a  most  important  part  in  the  evolution  of  human  civ- 
ilisation. They  did  what  Venice  did  in  the  Middle  Ages 
and  Holland  in  subsequent  times.  They  carried  the  arts, 
inventions,  and  products  of  the  various  continents  and 
zones  of  climate  over  the  whole  known  world  from  Britain 
to  Ceylon.  But  they  were  too  much  dispersed,  too  mobile, 
and  too  defective  in  military  and  political  genius  to  con- 
front a  great  empire,  and  they  successively  fell  before  the 
Assyrian,  Babylonish,  and  Egyptian  conquerors.  Their 
arts,  their  trade,  their  naval  supremacy,  passed  to  the  in- 
habitants of  Western  seaboards,  islands,  and  more  sheltered 
bays. 

The  world  seemed  in  danger  of  perishing  by  exhaustion. 
It  needed  a  new  spirit  to  revive  it.  But  now  another  race 
appears  upon  the  scene ;  a  branch  of  that  great  Aryan 
people,  who  from  the  high  lands  of  central  Asia  have 
swept  over  Assyria,  India,  and  Europe,  the  people  who  as 
Greeks,  Romans,  Gauls,  or  Teutons  have  been  the  fore- 
most of  mankind,  of  whom  we  ourselves  are  but  a  younger 
branch.  Now,  too,  the  darkness  which  covered  those 
earlier  ages  of  the  world  rolls  off  :  accurate  history  begins, 
and  the  drama  proceeds  in  the  broad  light  of  certainty. 


4O  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

It  is  about  550  B.C.  that  the  first  great  name  in  general 
history  appears.  Cyrus  founds  the  Persian  empire.  For 
ages,  along  the  mountain  slopes  between  the  Hindoo  Koosh 
and  the  Caspian  Sea,  the  Persian  race  had  remained  a 
simple  horde  of  wandering  herdsmen,  apart  from  the  vast 
empires  of  Babylon  and  Nineveh  in  the  plains  below. 
There  they  grew  up  with  nobler  and  freer  thoughts,  not 
crushed  by  the  weight  of  a  powerful  monarchy,  not  de- 
graded by  decaying  superstitions,  nor  enervated  by  mate- 
rial riches.  They  honoured  truth,  freedom,  and  energy. 
They  had  faith  in  themselves  and  their  race.  They  valued 
morality  more  than  ceremonies.  They  believed  in  a  Su- 
preme Power  of  the  universe.  Just  as  the  northern  nations 
afterwards  poured  over  the  Roman  empire,  so  these 
stronger  tribes  were  preparing  to  descend  upon  the  decay- 
ing remains  of  the  Asiatic  empires.  They  needed  only  a 
captain,  and  they  found  one  worthy  of  the  task  in  the 
great  King  Cyrus. 

Marshalling  his  mountain  warriors  into  a  solid  army, 
Cyrus  swept  down  upon  the  plains,  and  one  by  one  the 
empires  fell  before  him,  until  from  the  Mediterranean  to 
the  Indus,  from  Tartary  to  the  Arabian  Gulf,  all  Asia  sub- 
mitted to  his  sway.  His  successors  continued  his  work, 
pushing  across  Arabia,  Egypt,  Africa,  and  Northern  Asia 
itself.  There  over  that  enormous  tract  they  built  up  the 
Persian  monarchy,  which  swallowed  up  and  fused  into  one 
so  many  ancient  empires.  The  conquerors  were  soon  ab- 
sorbed, like  the  Northmen,  into  the  theocratic  faith  and 
life  of  the  conquered ;  and  throughout  half  of  the  then  in- 
habited globe  one  rule,  one  religion,  one  system  of  life 
alone  existed.  But  the  Persian  kings  could  not  rest  whilst 
a  corner  remained  unconquered.  On  the  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean  they  had  come  upon  a  people  who  had  de- 
fied them  with  strange  audacity.  Against  them  the  whole 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  4! 

weight  of  the  Asian  empire  was  put  forth.  For  ten  years 
fleets  and  armies  were  preparing.  There  came  archers 
from  the  wastes  of  Tartary  and  the  deserts  of  Africa ; 
charioteers  from  Nineveh  and  Babylon  ;  horsemen,  club- 
men, and  spearmen  ;  the  mailclad  footmen  of  Persia ;  the 
fleets  of  the  Phoenicians  ;  all  the  races  of  the  East  gath- 
ered in  one  vast  host,  and,  as  legend  said,  5,000,000  men 
and  2000  ships  poured  over  the  Eastern  seas  upon  the 
devoted  people. 

And  who  were  they  who  seemed  thus  doomed  ?  Along 
the  promontories  and  islands  of  the  eastern  Mediterranean 
there  dwelt  the  scattered  race  whom  we  call  Greeks,  who 
had  gradually  worked  out  a  form  of  life  totally  differing 
from  the  old,  who  had  wonderfully  expanded  the  old  arts 
of  life  and  modes  of  thought.  With  them  the  destinies  of 
the  world  then  rested  for  all  its  future  progress.  With 
them  all  was  life,  change,  and  activity.  Broken  into  sec- 
tions by  infinite  bays,  mountains,  and  rivers,  scattered  over 
a  long  line  of  coasts  and  islands,  the  Greek  race,  with  na- 
tures as  varied  as  their  own  beautiful  land,  as  restless  as 
their  own  seas,  had  never  been  moulded  into  one  great 
solid  empire,  and  early  threw  off  the  weight  of  a  ruling 
caste  of  priests.  No  theocracy  or  religious  system  of 
society  ever  could  establish  itself  amidst  a  race  so  full  of 
life  and  motion,  exposed  to  influences  from  without,  divided 
within.  They  had  borrowed  the  arts  of  life  from  the  great 
Eastern  peoples,  and,  in  borrowing,  had  wonderfully  im- 
proved them.  The  alphabet,  shipbuilding,  commerce, 
they  had  from  the  Phoenicians  ;  architecture,  sculpture, 
painting,  from  the  Assyrian  or  Lydian  empires.  Geome- 
try, arithmetic,  astronomy,  they  had  borrowed  from  the 
Egyptians.  The  various  fabrics,  arts,  and  appliances  of 
the  East  came  to  them  in  profusion  across  the  seas.  Their 
earliest  lawgivers,  rulers,  and  philosophers  had  all  travelled 


42  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

through  the  great  Asian  kingdom,  and  came  back  to  their 
small  country  with  a  new  sense  of  all  the  institutions  and 
ideas  of  civilised  life. 

The  Greeks  borrowed,  they  did  not  imitate.  Alone  as 
yet,  they  had  thrown  off  the  tyranny  of  custom,  of  caste, 
of  kingcraft,  and  of  priestcraft.  They  only  had  moulded 
the  ponderous  column  and  the  uncouth  colossus  of  the 
East  into  the  graceful  shaft  and  the  lifelike  figure  of  the 
gods.  They  only  had  dared  to  think  freely,  to  ask  them- 
selves what  or  whence  was  this  earth,  to  meet  the  prob- 
lems of  abstract  thought,  to  probe  the  foundations  of  right 
and  wrong.  Lastly,  they  alone  had  conceived  the  idea  of 
a  people  not  the  servants  of  one  man  or  of  a  class,  not 
chained  down  in  a  rigid  order  of  submission,  but  the  free 
and  equal  citizens  of  a  republic ;  for  on  them  first  had 
dawned  the  idea  of  a  civilised  community  in  which  men 
should  be  not  masters  and  slaves,  but  brothers. 

On  poured  the  myriads  of  Asia,  creating  a  famine  as 
they  marched,  drying  up  the  streams,  and  covering  the 
seas  with  their  ships.  Who  does  not  know  the  tale  of 
that  immortal  effort  ?  —  how  the  Athenians  armed  old 
and  young,  burned  their  city,  and  went  on  board  their 
ships  —  how  for  three  days  Leonidas  and  his  three  hun- 
dred held  the  pass  against  the  Asian  host,  and  lay  down, 
each  warrior  at  his  post,  calmly  smiling  in  death  —  how 
the  Greek  ships  lay  in  ambush  in  their  islands,  for  the 
mighty  fleet  of  Persia  —  how  the  unwieldy  mass  was 
broken  and  pierced  by  its  dauntless  enemy  —  how,  all 
day,  the  battle  raged  beneath  the  eyes  of  the  great  king 
himself,  and,  at  its  close,  the  seas  were  heaving  with  the 
wrecks  of  the  shattered  host.  Of  all"  the  battles  in  his- 
tory, this  one  of  Salamis  was  the  most  precious  to  the 
human  race.  No  other  tale  of  war  can  surpass  it.  For 
in  that  war  the  heroism,  the  genius,  the  marvellous  audac- 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  43 

ity  shown  by  these  pigmy  fleets  and  armies  of  a  small, 
weak  race,  withstood  and  crushed  the  entire  power  of 
Asia,  and  preserved  from  extinction  the  life  and  intellect 
of  future  ages. 

Victory  followed  upon  victory,  and  the  whole  Greek 
race  expanded  with  this  amazing  triumph.  The  old  world 
had  been  brought  face  to  face  with  the  intellect  which 
was  to  transform  it.  The  Greek  mind,  with  the  whole 
East  open  to  it,  exhibited  inexhaustible  activity.  A  cen- 
tury sufficed  to  develop  a  thoroughly  new  phase  of  civili- 
sation. They  carried  the  arts  to  a  height  whereon  they 
stand  as  the  types  for  all  time.  In  poetry  they  exhausted 
and  perfected  every  form  of  composition.  In  politics  they 
built  up  a  multitude  of  communities,  rich  with  a  prolific 
store  of  political  and  social  institutions.  Throughout  their 
stormy  history  stand  forth  great  names.  Now  and  then 
there  rose  amongst  them  leaders  of  real  genius.  For  a 
time  they  showed  some  splendid  instances  of  public  virtue, 
of  social  life,  patriotism,  elevation,  sagacity,  and  energy. 
For  a  moment  Athens  at  least  may  have  believed  that 
she  had  reached  the  highest  type  of  political  existence. 
But  with  all  this  activity  and  greatness  there  was  no  true 
unity.  Wonderful  as  was  their  ingenuity,  their  versatility 
and  energy,  it  was  too  often  wasted  in  barren  struggles 
and  wanton  restlessness.  For  a  century  and  a  half  after 
the  Persian  invasion,  the  petty  Greek  states  contended  in 
one  weary  round  of  contemptible  civil  wars  and  aimless 
revolutions.  One  after  another  they  cast  their  great  men 
aside,  to  think  out  by  themselves  the  thoughts  that  were 
to  live  for  all  time,  and  gave  themselves  up  to  be  the 
victims  of  degraded  adventurers.  For  one  moment  only 
in  their  history,  if  indeed  for  that,  they  did  become  a 
nation.  At  last,  wearied  out  by  endless  wars  and  con- 
stant revolutions,  the  Greek  states  by  force  and  fraud 


44 


THE    MEANING   OF    HISTORY. 


were  fused  in  one  people  by  the  Macedonian  kings  ;  and 
by  Macedon,  instead  of  by  true  Hellas,  the  great  work  so 
long  postponed,  but  through  their  history  never  forgotten, 
was  at  length  attempted  —  the  work  of  avenging  the  Per- 
sian invasion,  and  subduing  Asia. 

Short  and  wonderful  was  that  career  of  conquest,  due 
wholly  to  one  marvellous  mind.  Alexander,  indeed,  in 
military  and  practical  genius  seems  to  stand  above  all 
Greeks,  as  Caesar  above  all  Romans;  they  two  the  great- 
est chiefs  of  the  ancient  world.  No  story  in  history  is  so 
romantic  as  the  tale  of  that  ten  years  of  victory  when 
Alexander,  at  the  head  of  some  thirty  thousand  veteran 
Greeks,  poured  over  Asia,  crushing  army  after  army,  tak- 
ing city  after  city,  and  receiving  the  homage  of  prince 
after  prince,  himself  fighting  like  a  knight-errant :  until, 
subduing  the  Persian  empire,  and  piercing  Asia  from  side 
to  side,  and  having  reached  even  the  great  rivers  of  India, 
he  turned  back  to  Babylon  to  organise  his  vast  empire,  to 
found  new  cities,  pour  life  into  the  decrepit  frame  of  the 
East,  and  give  to  these  entranced  nations  the  arts  and 
wisdom  of  Greece.  For  this  he  came  to  Babylon,  but 
came  thither  only  to  die.  Endless  confusion  ensued ; 
province  after  province  broke  up  into  a  separate  king- 
dom, and  the  vast  empire  of  Alexander  became  the  prey 
of  military  adventurers. 

Yet,  though  this  creation  of  his  genius,  like  so  much 
else  that  Greece  accomplished,  was,  indeed,  in  appearance 
a  disastrous  failure,  still  it  had  not  been  in  vain.  The 
Greek  mind  was  diffused  over  the  East  like  the  rays  of 
the  rising  sun  when  it  revives  and  awakens  slumbering 
nature.  The  Greek  language,  the  most  wonderful  instru- 
ment of  thought  ever  composed  by  man,  became  common 
to  the  whole  civilised  world ;  it  bound  together  all  edu- 
cated men  from  the  Danube  to  the  Indus.  The  Greek 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  45 

literature,  poetry,  history,  science,  philosophy,  and  art 
were  at  once  the  common  property  of  the  empire.  The 
brilliance,  the  audacity,  the  strength  of  the  Greek  reason- 
ing awoke  the  dormant  powers  of  thought.  The  idea  of 
laws,  the  idea  of  states,  the  idea  of  citizenship,  came  like 
a  revelation  upon  the  degenerate  slaves  of  the  Eastern 
tyrannies.  Nor  was  the  result  less  important  to  the  Greek 
mind  itself.  Now,  at  last,  the  world  was  open  without 
obstacle.  The  philosophers  poured  over  the  new  empire  ; 
they  ransacked  the  records  of  primeval  times ;  they  stud- 
ied the  hoarded  lore  of  the  Egyptian  and  Chaldean  priests. 
Old  astronomical  observations,  old  geometric  problems, 
long  concealed,  were  thrown  open  to  them.  They  trav- 
elled over  the  whole  continent  of  Asia,  studying  its 
wonders  of  the  past,  collecting  its  natural  curiosities,  ex- 
amining its  surface,  its  climates,  its  production,  its  plants, 
its  animals,  and  its  human  races,  customs,  and  ideas. 
Lastly,  they  gathered  up  and  pondered  over  the  half- 
remembered  traditions  and  the  half-comprehended  mys- 
teries of  Asian  belief :  the  conceptions  which  had  risen 
up  before  the  intense  abstraction  of  Indian  and  Baby- 
lonian mystics,  Jewish  and  Egyptian  prophets  and  priests ; 
the  notion  of  some  great  principle  or  thought,  or  Being, 
utterly  unseen  and  unknown,  above  all  gods,  and  without 
material  form.  Thus  arose  the  earliest  germ  of  that  spirit 
which,  by  uniting  Greek  logic  with  Chaldean  or  Jewish 
imagination,  prepared  the  way  for  the  religious  systems 
of  Mussulman  and  Christian. 

Such  was  the  result  of  the  great  conquest  of  Alexander. 
Not  by  its  utter  failure  as  an  empire  are  we  to  judge  it ; 
not  by  the  vices  and  follies  of  its  founder,  nor  the  profli- 
gate orgies  of  its  dissolution,  must  we  condemn  it.  We 
must  value  it  as  the  means  whereby  the  effete  world  of 
the  East  was  renewed  by  the  life  of  European  thought,  by 


46  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

which  arose  the  first  ideas  of  nature  as  a  whole  and  of 
mankind  as  a  whole,  by  which  the  ground  was  first  pre- 
pared for  the  Roman  empire,  and  for  Christian  and 
Mahometan  religion. 

As  a  nation  the  Greeks  had  established  little  that  was 
lasting.  They  had  changed  much  ;  they  had  organised 
hardly  anything.  As  the  great  Asian  system  had  sacri- 
ficed all  to  permanence,  so  the  Greek  sacrificed  all  to 
movement.  The  Greeks  had  created  no  system  of  law, 
no  political  order,  no  social  system.  If  civilisation  had 
stopped  there,  it  would  have  ended  in  ceaseless  agitation, 
discord,  and  dissolution.  Their  character  was  wanting  in 
self-command  and  tenacity,  and  their  genius  was  too  often 
wasted  in  intellectual  licence.  Yet  if  politically  they  were 
unstable,  intellectually  they  were  great.  The  lives  of 
their  great  heroes  are  their  rich  legacy  to  all  future  ages  ; 
Solon,  Themistocles,  Pericles,  Epaminondas,  and  Demos- 
thenes stand  forth  as  the  types  of  bold  and  creative  leaders 
of  men.  The  story  of  their  best  days  has  scarcely  its 
equal  in  history.  In  art  they  gave  us  the  works  of  Phidias, 
the  noblest  image  of  the  human  form  ever  created  by  man. 
In  poetry,  the  models  of  all  time  —  Homer,  the  greatest 
and  the  earliest  of  poets  ;  ^Eschylus,  the  greatest  master  of 
the  tragic  art ;  Plato,  the  most  eloquent  of  moral  teachers  ; 
Pindar,  the  first  of  all  in  lyric  art.  In  philosophy  and  in 
science  the  Greek  mind  laid  the  foundations  of  all  knowl- 
edge, beyond  which,  until  the  last  three  centuries,  very 
partial  advance  had  been  made.  Building  on  the  ground 
prepared  by  the  Egyptians,  they  did  much  to  perfect 
arithmetic,  raised  geometry  to  a  science  by  itself,  and 
invented  that  system  of  astronomy  which  served  the  world 
for  fifteen  centuries.  In  knowledge  of  animal  life  and  the 
art  of  healing-  they  constructed  a  body  of  accurate  observa- 
tions and  sound  analysis ;  in  physics,  or  the  knowledge  of 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  47 

the  material  earth,  they  advanced  to  the  point  at  which 
little  was  added  till  the  time  of  Bacon  himself. 

In  abstract  thought  their  results  were  still  more  surpris- 
ing. All  the  ideas  that  lie  at  the  root  of  our  modern 
abstract  philosophy  may  be  found  in  germ  in  Greece. 
The  schools  of  modern  metaphysics  are  the  development 
of  conceptions  vaguely  grasped  by  them.  They  analysed 
with  perfect  precision  and  wonderful  minuteness  the 
processes  employed  in  language  and  in  reasoning  ;  they 
systematised  grammar  and  logic,  rhetoric  and  music  ;  they 
correctly  analysed  the  human  mind,  the  character,  the 
emotions,  and  founded  the  science  of  morality  and  the  art 
of  education ;  they  correctly  analysed  the  elements  of 
society  and  political  life,  and  initiated  the  science  of  politics, 
or  the  theory  of  social  union.  Lastly,  they  criticised  and 
laid  bare  all  the  existing  beliefs  of  mankind  ;  pierced  the 
imposing  falsehood  of  the  old  religions  ;  meditated  on  all 
the  various  answers  ever  given  to  the  problem  of  human 
destiny,  of  the  universe  and  its  origin,  and  slowly  worked 
out  the  conception  of  unity  through  the  whole  visible  and 
invisible  universe,  which,  in  some  shape  or  other,  has  been 
the  belief  of  man  for  twenty  centuries.  Such  were  their 
gifts  to  the  world.  It  was  an  intellect  active,  subtle,  and 
real,  marked  by  the  true  scientific  character  of  freedom, 
precision,  and  consistency.  And,  as  the  Greek  intellect 
overtopped  the  intellect  of  all  races  of  men,  and  combined 
in  itself  the  gifts  of  all  others,  so  were  the  great  intellects 
of  Greece  all  overtopped  and  concentrated  in  one  great 
mind  —  the  greatest,  doubtless,  of  all  human  minds  —  the 
matchless  Aristotle ;  as  the  poet  says,  '  the  master  of 
those  who  know,'  who,  in  all  branches  of  human  knowl- 
edge, built  the  foundations  of  abiding  truth. 

Let  us  pause  for  moment  to  reflect  what  point  we  have 
reached  in  the  history  of  civilisation.  Asia  had  founded 


48  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

the  first  arts  and  usages  of  material  life,  begun  the  earliest 
social  institutions,  and  taught  us  the  rudiments  of  science 
and  of  thought.  Greece  had  expanded  all  these  in  infinite 
variety  and  subtlety,  had  instituted  the  free  state,  and 
given  life  to  poetry  and  art,  had  formed  fixed  habits  of  ac- 
curate reasoning  and  of  systematic  observation.  Materially 
and  intellectually  civilisation  existed.  Yet  in  Greece  we 
feel  that,  socially,  everything  is  abortive.  The  Greeks 
had  not  grown  into  a  united  nation.  They  split  into  a 
multitude  of  jealous  republics.  These  republics  split  into 
hostile  and  restless  factions.  And  when  the  genius  of 
the  Macedonian  kings  had  at  last  founded  an  empire,  it 
lasted  but  twenty  years,  and  gave  place  to  even  more 
colossal  confusion.  All  that  we  associate  with  true  national 
existence  was  yet  to  come,  but  the  noble  race  who  were 
to  found  it  had  long  been  advancing  towards  their  high 
destiny.  Alexander,  perhaps,  had  scarcely  heard  of  that 
distant,  half-educated  people,  who  for  four  centuries  had 
been  slowly  building  up  the  power  which  was  to  absorb 
and  supersede  his  empire. 

Far  beyond  the  limits  of  his  degenerate  subjects, 
worthier  successors  of  his  genius  were  at  hand :  the 
Romans  were  coming  upon  the  world.  The  Greeks 
founded  the  city,  the  Romans  the  nation.  The  Greeks 
were  the  authors  of  philosophy,  the  Romans  of  govern- 
ment, justice,  and  peace.  The  Greek  ideal  was  thought, 
the  Roman  ideal  was  law.  The  Greeks  taught  us  the 
noble  lesson  of  individual  freedom,  the  Romans  the  still 
nobler  lesson,  the  sense  of  social  duty.  It  is  just,  there- 
fore, that  to  the  Romans,  as  to  the  people  who  alone 
throughout  all  ages  gave  unity,  peace,  and  order  to  the 
civilised  world,  who  gave  us  the  elements  of  our  modern 
political  life,  and  have  left  us  the  richest  record  of  public 
duty,  heroism,  and  self-sacrifice — it  is  just  that  to  them 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  49 

we  assign  the  place  of  the  noblest  nation  in  ancient  history. 
That  which  marks  the  Roman  with  his  true  greatness  was 
his  devotion  to  the  social  body,  his  sense  of  self-surrender 
to  country  :  a  duty  to  which  the  claims  of  family  and  person 
were  implicitly  to  yield  ;  which  neither  death,  nor  agony, 
nor  disgrace  could  subdue  ;  which  was  the  only  reward, 
pleasure,  or  religion  which  a  true  citizen  could  need.  This 
was  the  greatness,  not  of  a  few  leading  characters,  but  of 
an  entire  people  during  many  generations.  The  Roman 
state  did  not  give  merely  examples  of  heroes  —  it  was 
formed  of  heroes  ;  nor  were  they  less  marked  by  their 
sense  of  obedience,  submission  to  rightful  authority  where 
the  interest  of  the  state  required  it,  submission  to  order 
and  law. 

Nor  were  the  Romans  without  a  deep  sense  of  justice. 
They  did  not  war  to  crush  the  conquered  ;  once  subdued, 
they  dealt  with  them  as  their  fellows,  they  made  equal 
laws  and  a  common  rule  for  them  ;  they  bound  them  all 
into  the  same  service  of  their  common  country.  Above 
all  other  nations  in  the  world  they  believed  in  their  mis- 
sion and  destiny.  From  age  to  age  they  paused  not  in 
one  great  object.  No  prize  could  beguile  them,  no  de- 
lusion distract  them.  Each  Roman  felt  the  divinity  of  the 
Eternal  City,  destined  always  to  march  onwards  in  triumph  : 
in  its  service  every  faculty  of  his  mind  was  given  ;  life, 
wealth,  and  rest  were  as  nothing  to  this  cause.  In  this 
faith  they  could  plan  out  for  the  distant  future,  build  up 
so  as  to  prepare  for  vast  extension,  calculate  far  distant 
schemes,  and  lay  stone  by  stone  the  walls  of  an  enduring 
structure.  Hence  throughout  the  great  age  each  Roman 
was  a  statesman,  for  he  needed  to  provide  for  the  future 
ages  of  his  country ;  each  Roman  was  a  citizen  of  the 
world,  for  all  nations  were  destined  to  be  his  fellow- 
citizens  ;  each  Roman  could  command,  for  he  had  learnt 
D 


JO  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

to  obey,  and  to  know  that  he  who  commands  and  he  who 
obeys  are  but  the  servants  of  one  higher  power — their 
common  fatherland. 

Long  and  stern  were  the  efforts  by  which  this  power 
was  built  up.  Deep  as  is  the  mystery  which  covers  the 
origin  of  Rome,  we  can  still  trace  dimly  how,  about 
the  centre  of  the  Italian  peninsula,  along  the  banks  of  the 
Tiber,  fragments  of  two  tribes  were  fused  by  some  heroic 
chieftain  into  one ;  the  first  more  intellectual,  supple,  and 
ingenious,  the  second  more  stubborn,  courageous,  and 
faithful.  We  see  more  clearly  how  this  compound  people 
rose  through  the  strength  of  these  qualities  of  mind  and 
character  to  be  the  foremost  of  the  neighbouring  tribes ; 
how  they  long  maintained  that  religious  order  of  society 
which  the  Greeks  so  early  shook  off  ;  how  it  moulded  all 
the  institutions  of  their  life,  filled  them  with  reverence  for 
the  duties  of  family,  for  their  parents,  their  wives,  for  the 
memory  and  the  spirit  of  their  dead  ancestors,  taught  them 
submission  to  judges  and  chiefs,  devotion  to  their  mother- 
city,  love  for  her  commands,  her  laws,  and  her  traditions, 
trained  them  to  live  and  die  for  her  —  indeed,  compassed 
their  whole  existence  with  a  sense  of  duty  towards  their 
fellows  and  each  other ;  how  this  sense  of  social  duty  grew 
into  the  very  fibres  of  their  iron  natures,  kept  the  state 
through  all  dangers  rooted  in  the  imperishable  trust  and 
instinct  of  a  massive  people  ;  then  how  this  well-knit  race 
advanced  step  by  step  upon  their  neighbouring  tribes, 
slowly  united  them  in  one,  gave  them  their  own  laws,  made 
them  their  own  citizens ;  step  by  step  advanced  upon  the 
only  civilised  nation  of  the  peninsula,  the  theocratic  society 
of  Etruria,  took  from  them  the  arts  of  war  and  peace  ;  how 
the  hordes  of  Northern  barbarians  poured  over  the  penin- 
sula like  a  flood,  sweeping  all  the  nations  below  its  waters, 
and  when  they  emerged,  Rome  only  was  left  strong  and 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  5! 

confident ;  how,  after  four  centuries  of  constant  struggle, 
held  up  always  by  the  sense  of  future  greatness,  the 
Romans  had  at  length  absorbed  one  by  one  the  leading 
nations  of  Italy,  and  by  one  supreme  effort,  after  thirty 
years  of  war,  had  crushed  their  noblest  and  strongest 
rivals,  their  equals  in  all  but  genius  and  fortune,  and  stood 
at  last  the  masters  of  Italy,  from  shore  to  shore. 

Soon  came  the  great  crisis  of  their  history,  the  long 
wars  of  Rome  and  Carthage.  On  one  side  was  the  genius 
of  war,  empire,  law,  and  art,  on  the  other  the  genius  of 
commerce,  industry,  and  wealth.  The  subjects  of  Carthage 
were  scattered  over  the  Mediterranean,  the  power  of  Rome 
was  compact.  Carthage  fought  with  regular  mercenaries, 
Rome  with  her  disciplined  citizens.  Carthage  had  con- 
summate generals,  but  Rome  had  matchless  soldiers. 
Long  the  scale  trembled.  Not  once  nor  twice  was  Rome 
stricken  down  to  the  dust.  Punic  fleets  swept  the  seas. 
African  horsemen  scoured  the  plains.  Barbarian  hordes 
were  gathered  up  by  the  wealth  of  Carthage,  and  mar- 
shalled by  the  genius  of  her  great  captain.  For  her  fought 
the  greatest  military  genius  of  the  ancient  world,  perhaps 
of  all  time.  Hannibal,  himself  a  child  of  the  camp,  train- 
ing a  veteran  army  in  the  wars  of  Spain,  led  his  victorious 
troops  across  Gaul,  crossed  the  Alps,  poured  down  upon 
Italy,  struck  down  army  after  army,  and  at  last,  by  one 
crowning  victory,  scattered  the  last  military  force  of  Rome. 
Beset  by  an  invincible  army  in  the  heart  of  Italy,  her 
strongholds  stormed,  without  generals  or  armies,  without 
money  or  allies,  without  cavalry  or  ships,  it  seemed  that 
the  last  hour  of  Rome  was  come.  Now,  if  ever,  she 
needed  that  faith  in  her  destiny,  the  solid  strength  of  her 
slow  growth,  and  the  energy  of  her  entire  people.  They 
did  not  fail  her.  In  her  worst  need  her  people  held  firm, 
her  senate  never  lost  heart,  armies  grew  out  of  the  very 


52  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

remnants  and  slaves  within  her  walls.  Inch  by  inch  the 
invader  was  driven  back,  watched  and  besieged  in  turn. 
The  genius  of  Rome  revived  in  Scipio.  He  it  was  who, 
with  an  eagle's  sight,  saw  the  weakness  of  her  enemy, 
swooped,  with  an  eagle's  flight,  upon  Carthage  herself,  and 
at  last,  before  her  walls,  overthrew  Hannibal,  and  with  him 
the  hopes  and  power  of  his  country  and  his  race. 

It  is  in  these  first  centuries  that  we  see  the  source 
of  the  greatness  of  Rome.  Then  was  founded  her  true 
strength.  What  tales  of  heroism,  dignity,  and  endurance 
have  they  not  left  us  !  There  are  no  types  of  public  virtue 
grander  than  these.  Brutus  condemning  his  traitor  sons 
to  death  ;  Horatius  defending  the  bridge  against  an  army  ; 
Cincinnatus  taken  from  the  plough  to  rule  the  state,  re- 
turning from  ruling  the  state  again  to  the  plough ;  the 
Decii,  father  and  son,  solemnly  devoting  themselves  to 
death  to  propitiate  the  gods  of  Rome  ;  Regulus  the  prisoner 
going  to  his  home  only  to  exhort  his  people  not  to  yield, 
and  returning  calmly  to  his  prison ;  Cornelia  offering  up 
her  children  to  death  and  shame  for  the  cause  of  the 
people  ;  great  generals  content  to  live  like  simple  yeomen  ; 
old  and  young  ever  ready  to  march  to  certain  death  ;  hearts 
proof  against  eloquence,  gold,  or  pleasure ;  noble  matrons 
training  their  children  to  duty  ;  senates  ever  confident  in 
their  country ;  generals  returning  from  conquered  nations 
in  poverty ;  the  leader  of  triumphant  armies  becoming  the 
equal  of  the  humblest  citizens. 

Carthage  once  overcome,  the  conquest  of  the  world  fol- 
lowed rapidly.  Spain  and  the  islands  of  the  Mediterranean 
Sea  were  the  prizes  of  the  war.  Lower  Gaul,  Greece,  and 
Macedon  were  also  within  fifty  years  incorporated  in  Rome. 
She  pushed  further.  The  whole  empire  of  Alexander  fell 
into  her  hands,  and  at  length,  after  seven  hundred  years 
of  conquest,  she  remained  the  mistress  of  the  civilised 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  53 

world.  But,  long  before  this,  she  herself  had  become  the 
prey  of  convulsions.  The  marvellous  empire,  so  rapidly 
expanded,  had  deeply  corrupted  the  power  which  had  won 
it.  Her  old  heroes  were  no  more.  Her  virtues  failed  her, 
and  her  vast  dominions  had  long  become  the  prize  of 
bloody  and  selfish  factions.  The  ancient  republic,  whose 
freemen  had  once  met  to  consult  in  the  Forum,  broke  up 
in  the  new  position  for  which  her  system  was  utterly  unfit. 
For  nearly  a  century  the  great  empire  had  inevitably 
tended  towards  union  in  a  single  centre.  One  dictator 
after  another  had  possessed  and  misused  the  sovereign 
power.  At  last  it  passed  to  the  worthiest,  and  the  rule 
over  the  whole  ancient  world  came  to  its  greatest  name, 
the  noble  Julius  Caesar.  In  him  were  found  more  than  the 
Roman  genius  for  government  and  law,  with  a  gentleness 
and  grace  few  Romans  ever  had  ;  an  intellect  truly  Greek 
in  its  love  of  science,  of  art,  in  reach  and  subtlety  of 
thought ;  and,  above  all  this,  in  spite  of  vices  and  passions 
which  he  shared  with  his  age,  a  breadth  of  view  and  heart, 
a  spirit  of  human  fellowship  and  social  progress,  peculiar 
to  one  who  was  the  friend  of  men  of  different  races,  coun- 
tries, and  ideas.  Julius  was  consummate  general,  orator, 
poet,  historian,  ruler,  lawgiver,  reformer,  and  philosopher ; 
in  the  highest  sense  the  statesman,  magnanimous,  provi- 
dent, laborious,  large-hearted,  affable,  resolute,  and  brave. 
With  him  the  Roman  empire  enters  on  a  new  and  better 
phase.  He  first  saw  and  showed  how  this  vast  aggregate 
of  men  must  be  ruled  no  longer  as  the  subjects  of  one 
conquering  city,  but  as  a  real  and  single  state  governed  in 
the  interest  of  all,  with  equal  rights  and  common  laws  ; 
and  Rome  be  no  longer  the  mistress,  but  the  leader  only 
of  the  nations.  In  this  spirit  he  broke  with  the  old 
Roman  temper  of  narrow  nationality  and  pride ;  raised  to 
power  and  trust  new  men  of  all  ranks  and  of  all  nations ; 


54  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

opened  the  old  Roman  privileges  of  citizenship  to  the  new 
subjects  ;  laboured  to  complete  and  extend  the  Roman  law  ; 
reorganised  the  administration  of  the  distant  provinces ; 
and  sought  to  extinguish  the  trace  of  party  fury  and  hatred. 

When  the  selfish  rage  of  the  old  Roman  aristocracy 
had  struck  him  down  before  his  work  was  half  complete, 
yet  his  work  did  not  perish  with  him.  The  Roman 
empire  at  last  rose  to  the  level  which  he  had  planned 
for  it.  For  some  two  centuries  it  did  succeed  in  main- 
taining an  era  of  progress,  peace,  and  civilisation  —  a 
government,  indeed,  at  times  frightfully  corrupt,  at  times 
convulsed  to  its  foundations,  yet  in  the  main  in  accordance 
with  the  necessities  of  the  times,  and  rising  in  its  highest 
types  to  wise,  tranquil,  and  prudent  rule,  embracing  all, 
open  to  all,  just  to  all,  and  beloved  by  all.  Then  it  was, 
during  those  two  centuries,  broken  as  they  were  by 
temporary  convulsions,  that  the  nations  of  Europe  rose 
into  civilised  life.  Then  the  Spaniard,  the  Gaul,  the 
Briton,  the  German,  the  people  that  dwelt  along  the  whole 
course  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Danube,  first  learnt  the  arts 
and  ideas  of  life ;  law,  government,  society,  education, 
industry,  appeared  amongst  them ;  and  over  the  tracts 
of  land  trodden  for  so  many  centuries  by  rival  tribes  and 
devastating  hordes,  security  first  appeared,  turmoil  gave 
place  to  repose,  and  there  rose  the  notion,  not  forgotten 
for  ten  centuries,  of  the  solemn  Peace  of  Rome. 

Let  us  recount  what  it  was  that  the  Roman  had  given 
to  the  world.  In  the  first  place,  his  law  —  that  Roman 
law,  the  most  perfect  political  creation  of  the  human 
mind,  which  for  one  thousand  years  grew  with  one  even 
and  expanding  life  —  the  law  which  is  the  basis  of  all 
the  law  of  Europe,  including  even  our  own.  Then  the 
political  system  of  towns.  The  actual  municipal  constitu- 
tion of  the  old  cities  of  Western  Europe,  from  Gibraltar 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  55 

to  the  Baltic,  from  the  Channel  to  Sicily,  is  but  a  develop- 
ment of  the  Roman  city,  which  lasted  through  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  began  modern  industrial  life.  Next,  all  the 
institutions  of  administration  and  police  which  modern 
Europe  has  developed  had  their  origin  there.  To  them 
in  the  Middle  Ages  men  turned  when  the  age  of  confusion 
was  ending.  To  them  again  men  turned  when  the  Middle 
Ages  themselves  were  passing  away.  The  establishment 
of  elective  assemblies,  of  graduated  magistracies,  of  local 
and  provincial  justice,  of  public  officers  and  public  institu- 
tions, free  museums,  baths,  theatres,  libraries,  and  schools 
—  all  that  we  understand  by  organised  society,  in  a  word, 
may  be  traced  back  to  the  Empire.  Throughout  all 
Western  Europe,  from  that  germ,  civilisation  arose  and 
raised  its  head  after  the  invasion  of  the  Northern  tribes. 
From  the  same  source,  too,  arose  the  force,  at  once 
monarchic  and  municipal,  which  overthrew  the  feudal 
system.  It  was  the  remnant  of  the  old  Roman  ideas  of 
provincial  organisation  that  first  formed  the  counties  and 
duchies  which  afterwards  coalesced  into  a  state.  It 
was  the  memory  of  the  Roman  township  which  gave  birth 
to  the  first  free  towns  of  Europe.  It  was  the  tradition 
of  a  Roman  emperor  which,  by  long  intermediate  steps, 
transformed  the  Teutonic  chieftain  into  the  modern  king 
or  emperor.  London,  York,  Lincoln,  Winchester,  Glouces- 
ter, and  Chester  were  Roman  cities,  and  formed  then,  as 
they  did  for  the  earlier  periods  of  our  history,  the  pivots 
of  our  national  administration.  Paris,  Rouen,  Lyons, 
Marseilles,  Bordeaux,  in  France  ;  Constance,  Basle,  Cob- 
lentz,  Cologne,  upon  the  Rhine  ;  Cadiz,  Barcelona,  Seville, 
Toledo,  Lisbon,  in  the  Iberian  —  Genoa,  Milan,  Verona, 
Rome,  and  Naples  in  the  Italian  peninsula,  were  in 
Roman,  as  in  modern  times,  the  great  national  centres 
of  their  respective  countries.  But,  above  all  else,  Rome 


Ij6  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

founded  a  permanent  system  of  free  obedience  to  the  laws 
on  the  one  hand,  and  a  temperate  administration  of  them 
on  the  other ;  the  constant  sense  of  each  citizen  having  his 
place  in  a  complex  whole. 

The  Roman's  strength  was  in  action,  not  in  thought ; 
but  in  thought  he  gave  us  something  besides  his  special 
creation  of  universal  law.  It  was  his  to  discover  the 
meaning  of  history.  Egypt  had  carved  on  eternal  rocks 
the  pompous  chronicles  of  kings.  The  Greeks  wrote  pro- 
found and  brilliant  memoirs.  It  was  reserved  to  a  Roman 
to  conceive  and  execute  the  history  of  his  people  stretch- 
ing over  seven  hundred  years,  and  to  give  the  first  proof 
of  the  continuity  and  unity  of  national  life.  In  art  the 
Roman  did  little  but  develop  the  Greek  types  of  architec- 
ture into  stupendous  and  complex  forms,  fit  for  new  uses, 
and  worthy  of  his  people's  grandeur.  But  the  great  tri- 
umphs of  his  skill  were  in  engineering.  He  invented 
the  arch,  the  dome,  and  the  viaduct.  The  bridges  of  the 
Middle  Ages  were  studied  from  Roman  remains.  The 
great  domes  of  Italian  cathedrals,  of  which  that  of  our 
own  St.  Paul's  is  an  imitation,  were  formed  directly  on  the 
model  of  a  temple  at  Rome.  But  in  thought,  the  great 
gift  of  Rome  was  in  her  language,  which  has  served  as 
an  admirable  instrument  of  religious,  moral,  and  political 
reflection,  and,  with  many  dialectic  variations,  forms  the 
base  of  the  languages  of  three  of  the  great  nations  of 
Europe.  Then  it  was,  under  the  Roman  empire,  that 
the  stores  of  Greek  thought  became  common  to  the  world. 
As  the  empire  of  Alexander  had  shed  them  over  the  East, 
the  empire  of  Rome  gave  them  to  the  West.  Greek 
language,  literature,  poetry,  science,  and  art  became  the 
common  education  of  the  civilised  world  ;  and  from  the 
Grampians  to  the  Euphrates,  from  the  Atlas  to  the  Rhine 
and  the  Caucasus,  for  the  first  and  only  time  in  the  history 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  57 

of  man,  Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa  formed  one  political 
whole.  The  union  of  the  oriental  half,  indeed,  was  mainly 
external  and  material,  but  throughout  the  western  half 
a  common  order  of  ideas  prevailed.  Their  religion  was 
the  belief  in  many  gods  —  a  system  in  which  each  of  the 
powers  of  nature,  each  virtue,  each  art,  was  thought  to  be 
the  manifestation  of  some  separate  god.  It  was  a  system 
which  stimulated  activity,  self-reliance,  toleration,  socia- 
bility, and  art,  but  which  left  the  external  world  a  vague 
and  unmeaning  mystery,  and  the  heart  of  man  a  prey  to 
violent  and  conflicting  passions.  It  possessed  not  that 
idea  of  unity  which  alone  can  sustain  philosophy  and 
science,  and  alone  can  establish  in  the  breast  a  fixed  and 
elevated  moral  conscience. 

The  Roman  system  had  its  strong  points,  but  it  had 
many  weak.  They  were  in  the  main  three.  It  was  a 
system  founded  upon  war,  upon  slavery,  upon  fictions  and 
dreams.  As  to  war,  it  is  most  true  that  war  was  not  then, 
as  in  modern  times,  the  monstrous  negation  of  civilisation. 
It  seems  that  by  war  alone  could  nations  then  be  pressed 
into  that  union  which  was  essential  to  all  future  progress. 
Whilst  war  was  common  to  all  the  nations  of  antiquity, 
with  the  Romans  alone  it  became  the  instrument  of  prog- 
ress. The  Romans  warred  only  to  found  peace.  They 
did  not  so  much  conquer  as  incorporate  the  nations.  Not 
more  by  the  strength  of  the  Roman  than  by  the  instinctive 
submission  in  the  conquered  to  his  manifest  superiority, 
was  the  great  empire  built  up.  Victors  and  vanquished 
share  in  the  honour  of  the  common  result  —  law,  order, 
peace,  and  government.  When  the  Romans  conquered, 
it  was  once  for  all.  That  which  once  became  a  province 
of  the  Roman  empire  rested  thenceforth  in  profound 
tranquillity.  No  standing  armies,  no  brutal  soldiery,  over- 
awed the  interior  or  the  towns.  Whilst  all  within  the 


58  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

circle  of  the  empire  rested  in  peace,  along  its  frontiers 
stood  the  disciplined  veterans  of  Rome  watching  the  rov- 
ing hordes  of  barbarians,  protecting  the  pale  of  civilisation. 

Still,  however  useful  in  its  place,  it  was  a  system  of 
war ;  a  system  necessarily  fatal  in  the  long-run  to  all  prog- 
ress, to  all  industry,  to  all  the  domestic  virtues,  to  all  the 
gentler  feelings.  In  a  state  in  which  all  great  ideas  and 
traditions  originated  in  conquest,  the  dignity  of  labour, 
the  arts  of  industry,  were  never  recognised  or  respected  ; 
the  era  of  conquest  over,  the  existence  of  the  great  Roman 
became  in  too  many  cases  purposeless,  idle,  and  vicious. 
Charity,  compassion,  humanity,  were  unknown  virtues. 
The  home  was  sacrificed.  The  condition  of  woman  in  the 
wreck  of  the  family  relations  sank  to  the  lowest  ebb. 
In  a  word,  the  stern  virtues  of  the  old  Roman  private 
life  seemed  ending  in  inhuman  ferocity  and  monstrous 
debauchery. 

Secondly,  the  Roman,  like  every  ancient  system,  was 
a  system  of  slavery.  It  existed  only  for  the  few.  True 
industry  was  impossible.  The  whole  industrial  class  were 
degraded.  The  owners  of  wealth  and  its  producers  were 
alike  demoralised.  In  the  great  towns  were  gathered 
a  miserable  crowd  of  poor  freemen,  with  all  the  vices  of 
the  'mean  whites.'  Throughout  Italy  the  land  was  culti- 
vated, not  by  a  peasantry,  not  by  scattered  labourers,  but 
by  gangs  of  slaves,  guarded  in  workhouses  and  watched 
by  overseers.  Hence  usually  the  free  population  and 
all  civilisation  was  gathered  in  the  towns.  The  spaces 
between  and  around  them  were  wildernesses,  with  past- 
urage and  slaves  in  place  of  agriculture  and  men. 

Thirdly,  it  was  a  system  based  on  a  belief  in  a  multitude 
of  gods,  a  system  without  truth,  or  coherence,  or  power. 
There  was  no  single  belief  to  unite  all  classes  in  one  faith. 
Nothing  ennobling  to  trust  in,  no  standard  of  right  and 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  59 

wrong  which  could  act  on  the  moral  nature.  There  were 
no  recognised  teachers.  The  moral  and  the  material  were 
hopelessly  confused.  The  politicians  had  no  system  of 
morality,  religion,  or  belief,  and  were  void  of  moral 
authority,  though  they  claimed  to  have  a  moral  right. 
The  philosophers  and  the  moralists  were  hardly  members 
of  the  state ;  each  taught  only  to  a  circle  of  admirers,  and 
exercised  no  wide  social  influence.  The  religion  of  the 
people  had  long  ceased  to  be  believed.  It  had  long  been 
without  any  moral  purpose  ;  it  became  a  vague  mass  of 
meaningless  traditions. 

With  these  threefold  sources  of  corruption  —  war, 
slavery,  false  belief  —  the  Roman  empire,  so  magnificent 
without,  was  a  rotten  fabric  within.  Politically  vigorous, 
morally  it  was  diseased.  Never  perhaps  has  the  world 
witnessed  cases  of  such  stupendous  moral  corruption,  as 
when  immense  power,  boundless  riches,  and  native  energy 
were  left  as  they  were  then  without  object,  control,  or 
shame.  Then,  from  time  to  time,  there  broke  forth  a 
very  orgy  of  wanton  strength.  But  its  hour  was  come. 
The  best  spirits  were  all  filled  with  a  sense  of  the  hollow- 
ness  and  corruption  around  them.  Statesmen,  poets,  and 
philosophers  in  all  these  last  eras  were  pouring  forth  their 
complaints  and  fears,  or  feebly  attempting  remedies.  The 
new  element  had  long  been  making  its  way  unseen,  had 
long  been  preparing  the  ground,  and  throughout  the  civil- 
ised world  there  was  rising  up  a  groan  of  weariness  and 
despair. 

For  three  centuries  a  belief  in  the  existence  of  one  God 
alone,  in  whom  were  concentrated  all  power  and  goodness, 
who  cared  for  the  moral  guidance  of  mankind,  a  belief  in 
the  immortality  of  the  soul  and  its  existence  in  another 
state,  had  been  growing  up  in  the  minds  of  the  best  Greek 
thinkers.  The  noble  morality  of  their  philosophers  had 


6O  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

taken  strong   hold  of   the   higher  consciences  of   Rome, 
and  had  diffused  amongst  the  better  spirits  throughout 
the  empire  new  and  purer  types.     Next  the  great  empire 
itself,  forcing  all  nations  in  one  state,  had  long  inspired  in 
its  worthiest  members  a  sense  of  the  great  brotherhood  of 
mankind,  had  slowly  mitigated  the  worst  evils  of  slavery, 
and  paved  the  way  for  a  religious  society.     Thirdly,  an- 
other and  a  greater  cause  was  at  work.     Through  Greek 
teachers  the  world  had  long  been  growing  familiar  with 
the  religious  ideas  of  Asia,  its  conceptions  of  a  superhuman 
world,  of  a  world  of  spirit,  angel,  demon,  future  state,  and 
.overruling  Creator,  with  its  mystical  imagery,  its  spiritual 
poetry,  its  intense  zeal  and  fervent  emotion.     And  now, 
partly  from  the  contact  with  Greek  thought  and  Roman 
civilisation,  a  great  change  was  taking  place  in  the  very 
heart  of  that  small  Jewish  race,  of  all  the  races  of  Asia 
known  to  us   the  most    intense,   imaginative,  and   pure : 
possessing  a  high  sense  of  personal  morality,  the  keenest 
yearnings   of    the   heart,    and    the   deepest    capacity   for 
spiritual   fervour.     In    their  midst  arose  a  fellowship  of 
devoted  brethren,  gathered  around  one  noble  and  touch- 
ing character,  which  adoration  has  veiled  in  mystery  till 
he  passes  from  the  pale  of  definite  history.     On  them  had 
dawned  the  vision  of  a  new  era  of  their  national  faith, 
which  should  expand  the  devotion  of  David,  the  spiritual 
zeal   of   Isaiah,  and   the  moral  power  of    Samuel  into  a 
gentler,  wider,  and  more  loving  spirit. 

How  this  new  idea  grew  to  the  height  of  a  new  religion, 
and  was  shed  over  the  whole  earth  by  the  strength  of 
its  intensity  and  its  purity,  is  to  us  a  familiar  tale.  We 
know  how  the  first  fellowship  of  the  brethren  met  ;  how 
they  went  forth  with  words  of  mercy,  love,  justice,  and 
hope ;  we  know  their  self-denial,  humility,  and  zeal ;  their 
heroic  lives  and  awful  deaths  ;  their  loving  natures  and 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  6 1 

their  noble  purposes  ;  how  they  gathered  around  them 
wherever  they  came  the  purest  and  greatest ;  how  across 
mountains,  seas,  and  continents  the  communion  of  saints 
joined  in  affectionate  trust ;  how  from  the  deepest  corrup- 
tion of  the  heart  arose  a  yearning  for  a  truer  life  ;  how  the 
new  faith,  ennobling  the  instincts  of  human  nature,  raised 
up  the  slave,  the  poor,  and  the  humble  to  the  dignity  of 
common  manhood,  and  gave  new  meaning  to  the  true 
nature  of  womanhood  ;  how,  by  slow  degrees,  the  church, 
with  its  rule  of  right,  of  morality,  and  of  communion, 
arose  ;  how  the  first  founders  and  apostles  of  this  faith 
lived  and  died,  and  all  their  gifts  were  concentrated  in 
one,  of  all  the  characters  of  certain  history  doubtless 
the  loftiest  and  purest  —  the  unselfish,  the  great-hearted 
Paul. 

Deeply  as  this  story  must  always  interest  us,  let  us  not 
forget  that  the  result  was  due  not  to  one  man  or  to  one 
people  —  that  each  race  gave  its  share  to  the  whole  : 
Greece,  her  intellect  and  grace  ;  Rome,  her  social  instinct, 
her  genius  for  discipline  ;  Judaea,  her  intensity  of  belief 
and  personal  morality  ;  Egypt  and  the  African  coast,  their 
combination  of  Hellenic,  Judaic,  and  Roman  traditions. 
The  task  that  lay  before  the  new  religion  was  immense. 
It  was,  upon  a  uniform  faith,  to  found  a  system  of  sound 
and  common  morality ;  to  reform  the  deep-rooted  evils  of 
slavery  ;  to  institute  a  method  which  should  educate,  teach, 
and  guide,  and  bring  out  the  tenderer,  purer,  and  higher 
instincts  of  our  nature.  The  powers  of  mind  and  of  char- 
acter had  been  trained,  first  by  Greece  and  then  by  Rome. 
To  the  Christian  church  came  the  loftier  mission  of  ruling 
the  affections  and  the  heart. 

From  henceforth  the  history  of  the  world  shows  a  new 
character. 

Now  and  henceforward  we  see  two  elements  in  civilisa- 


62  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

tion  working  side  by  side  —  the  practical  and  the  moral. 
There  is  now  a  system  to  rule  the  state  and  a  system  to 
act  upon  the  mind  ;  a  body  of  men  to  educate,  to  guide 
and  elevate  the  spirit  and  the  character  of  the  individual, 
as  well  as  a  set  of  rules  to  enforce  the  laws  and  direct  the 
action  of  the  nation.  There  is  henceforward  the  state  and 
the  church.  Hitherto  all  had  been  confused  ;  statesmen 
were  priests  and  teachers ;  public  officers  pretended  to 
order  men's  lives  by  law,  and  pretended  in  vain.  Hence- 
forward for  the  true  sequence  of  history  we  must  fix  our 
view  on  Europe,  on  Western  Europe  alone  :  we  leave 
aside  the  East.  The  half-Romanised,  the  half-Christian- 
ised East  will  pass  to  the  empire  of  Mohammed,  to  the 
Arab,  the  Mongol,  and  the  Turk.  For  the  true  evolution 
of  civilised  life  we  must  regard  the  heirs  of  time,  the 
West,  in  which  is  centred  the  progress  and  the  future  of 
the  race.  Henceforward,  then,  for  the  ten  centuries  of 
the  Middle  Ages  which  succeeded  in  Western  Europe  the 
fall  of  the  Roman  empire,  we  have  two  movements  to 
watch  together — Feudalism  and  Catholicism  —  the  sys- 
tem of  the  state  and  the  system  of  the  church  :  let  us  turn 
now  to  the  former. 

The  vast  empire  of  Rome  broke  up  with  prolonged  con- 
vulsions. Its  concentration  in  any  single  hand,  however 
necessary  as  a  transition,  became  too  vast  as  a  permanent 
system.  It  wanted  a  rural  population  ;  it  was  wholly  with- 
out local  life.  Long  the  awestruck  barbarians  stood  paus- 
ing to  attack.  At  length  they  broke  in.  Ever  bolder  and 
more  numerous  tribes  poured  onwards.  In  wave  after 
wave  they  swept  over  the  whole  empire,  sacking  cities, 
laying  waste  the  strongholds,  at  length  storming  Rome 
itself ;  and  laws,  learning,  industry,  art,  civilisation  itself, 
seem  swallowed  up  in  the  deluge.  For  a  moment  it 
appeared  that  all  that  was  Roman  had  vanished.  It  was 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  63 

submerged,  but  not  destroyed.  Slowly  the  waters  of  this 
overwhelming  invasion  abate.  Slowly  the  old  Roman 
towns  and  their  institutions  begin  to  appear  above  the 
waste  like  the  highest  points  of  a  flooded  country.  Slowly 
the  old  landmarks  reappear  and  the  forms  of  civilised 
existence.  Four  centuries  were  passed  in  one  continual 
ebb  and  flow ;  but  at  length  the  restless  movement  sub- 
sided. One  by  one  the  conquering  tribes  settled,  took 
root,  and  occupied  the  soil.  Step  by  step  they  learned 
the  arts  of  old  Rome.  At  length  they  were  transformed 
from  the  invaders  into  the  defenders.  King  after  king 
strove  to  give  form  to  the  heaving  mass,  and  put  an  end 
to  this  long  era  of  confusion.  'One,  at  length,  the  greatest 
of  them  all,  succeeded,  and  reared  the  framework  of 
modern  Europe. 

It  was  the  imperial  Charlemagne,  the  greatest  name  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  who,  like  some  Roman  emperor  restored 
to  life,  marshalled  the  various  tribes  which  had  settled  in 
France,  Germany,  Italy,  and  the  north  of  Spain,  into  a 
single  empire,  beat  back,  in  a  long  life  of  war,  the  tide  of 
invaders  on  the  west,  the  north,  and  south,  Saxon,  North- 
man, and  Saracen,  and  awakened  anew  in  the  memory  of 
nations  the  type  of  civil  government  and  organised  society. 
His  work  in  itself  was  but  a  single  and  a  temporary  effort ; 
but  in  its  distant  consequences  it  has  left  great  permanent 
effects.  It  was  like  a  desperate  rally  in  the  midst  of  con- 
fusion ;  but  it  gave  mankind  time  to  recover  much  that 
they  had  lost.  In  his  empire  may  be  traced  the  nucleus  of 
the  state  system  of  Western  Europe  ;  by  the  traditions  of 
his  name,  the  modern  monarchies  were  raised  into  power. 
He  too  gave  shape  and  vigour  to  the  first  efforts  of  public 
administration.  But  a  still  greater  result  was  the  indirect 
effect  of  his  life  and  labours.  It  was  by  the  spirit  of  his 
established  rule  that  the  feudal  system  which  had  been 


64  THE    MEANING   OF    HISTORY. 

spontaneously  growing  up  from  beneath  the  debris  of  the 
Roman  empire,  first  found  strength  to  develop  into  a 
methodical  form,  received  an  imperial  sanction  to  its 
scheme,  and  the  type  of  its  graduated  order  of  rule. 

What  was  this  feudal  system,  and  what  were  its  results  ? 
It  may  be  described  as  a  local  organisation  of  reciprocal 
duty  and  privilege.  In  the  first  place,  it  was  a  system  of 
local  defence.  The  knight  was  bound  to  guard  his  fee,  the 
baron  his  barony,  the  count  his  county,  the  duke  his  duchy. 
Then  it  was  a  system  of  local  government.  The  lord  of 
the  manor  had  his  court  of  justice,  the  great  baron  his 
greater  court,  and  the  king  his  court  above  all.  Then  it 
was  a  system  of  local  industry;,  the  freeholder  tilled  his 
own  fields,  the  knight  was  responsible  for  the  welfare  of  his 
own  lands.  The  lord  had  an  interest  in  the  prosperity  of 
his  lordship.  Hence  slowly  arose  an  agricultural  industry, 
impossible  in  any  other  way.  The  knight  cleared  the  coun- 
try of  robbers,  or  beat  back  invaders,  whilst  the  husband- 
man ploughed  beneath  his  castle  walls.  The  nation  no 
longer,  as  under  Greece  and  Rome,  was  made  up  of  scattered 
towns.  It  had  a  local  root,  a  rural  population,  and  complete 
system  of  agricultural  life.  The  monstrous  centralisation 
of  Rome  was  gone,  and  a  local  government  began. 

But  the  feudal  system  was  not  merely  material,  it  was 
also  moral;  not  simply  political,  it  was  social  also — nay, 
also  religious.  The  whole  of  society  was  bound  into  a 
hierarchy  or  long  series  of  gradations.  Each  man  had  his 
due  place  and  rank,  his  rights,  and  his  duties.  The  knight 
owed  protection  to  his  men ;  his  men  owed  their  services 
to  him.  Under  the  Roman  system,  there  had  been  only 
citizens  and  slaves.  Now  there  was  none  so  high  but  had 
grave  duties  to  all  below  ;  none  so  low,  not  the  meanest 
serf,  but  had  a  claim  for  protection.  Hence,  all  became, 
from  king  to  serf,  recognised  members  of  one  common 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  65 

society.  Thence  sprang  the  closest  bond  which  has  ever 
bound  man  to  man.  To  the  noble  natures  of  the  northern 
invaders  was  due  the  new  idea  of  personal  loyalty,  the 
spirit  of  truth,  faithfulness,  devotion,  and  trust,  the  lofty 
sense  of  honour  which  bound  the  warrior  to  his  captain, 
the  vassal  to  his  lord,  the  squire  to  his  knight.  It  ripened 
into  the  finest  temper  which  has  ever  ennobled  the  man 
of  action,  the  essence  of  chivalry  ;  in  its  true  sense  not 
dead,  not  destined  to  die  —  the  temper  of  mercy,  courtesy, 
and  truth,  of  fearlessness  and  trust,  of  a  generous  use  of 
power  and  strength,  of  succour  to  the  weak,  comfort  to  the 
poor,  reverence  for  age,  for  goodness,  and  for  woman; 
which  revolts  against  injustice,  oppression,  and  untruth, 
and  never  listens  to  a  call  unmoved.  It  is  not  possible 
that  this  spirit  is  dead.  It  watched  the  cradle  of  modern 
society,  and  is  the  source  of  our  poetry  and  art  ;  it  must 
live  for  future  service,  transformed  from  a  military  to  a 
peaceful  society.  It  may  yet  revive  the  seeds  of  trust 
and  duty  between  man  and  man,  inspire  the  labourer  with 
dignity  and  generosity,  raise  the  landlord  to  a  conscious- 
ness of  duty,  and  renew  the  mysterious  bond  which  unites 
all  those  who  labour  in  a  common  work. 

We  turn  to  the  Church,  the  moral  element  which  per- 
vades the  Middle  Ages.  Amidst  the  crash  of  the  fall- 
ing empire,  as  darker  grew  the  storm  which  swept  over 
the  visible  State  on  earth,  more  and  more  the  better 
spirits  turned  their  eyes  towards  a  Kingdom  above  the 
earth.  They  turned,  as  the  great  Latin  father  relates, 
amidst  utter  corruption  to  an  entire  reconstruction  of 
morality  ;  in  the  wreck  of  all  earthly  greatness,  they 
set  their  hearts  upon  a  future  life,  and  strove  amidst 
anarchy  and  bloodshed  to  found  a  moral  union  of  society. 
Hence  rose  the  Catholic  Church,  offering  to  the  thought- 
ful a  mysterious  and  inspiring  faith  ;  to  the  despairing 
E 


66  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

and  the  remorseful  a  new  and  higher  life  ;  to  the  wretched, 
comfort,  fellowship,  and  aid  ;  to  the  perplexed  a  majestic 
system  of  belief  and  practice  —  in  its  creed  Greek,  in  its 
worship  Asiatic,  in  its  constitution  Roman.  In  it  we 
see  the  Roman  genius  for  organisation  and  law,  trans- 
formed and  revived.  In  the  fall  of  her  material  greatness 
Rome's  social  greatness  survived.  Rome  still  remained 
the  centre  of  the  civilised  world.'  Latin  was  still  the 
language  which  bound  men  of  distant  lands  together. 
From  Rome  went  forth  the  edicts  which  were  common 
to  all  Europe.  The  majesty  of  Rome  was  still  the 
centre  of  civilisation.  The  bishop's  court  took  the  place 
of  that  of  the  imperial  governor.  The  peace  of  the 
church  took  the  place  of  the  peace  of  Rome  ;  and  from 
the  first,  the  barbarian  invaders  who  overthrew  the  hollow 
greatness  of  the  empire  humbled  themselves  reverently 
before  the  ministers  of  religion. 

The  church  stood  between  the  conqueror  and  the 
conquered,  and  joined  them  both  in  one.  She  told  to 
all  —  Roman  and  barbarian,  slave  or  freeman,  great  or 
weak  —  how  there  was  one  God,  one  Saviour  of  all,  one 
equal  soul  in  all,  one  common  judgment,  one  common 
life  hereafter.  She  told  them  how  all,  as  children  of  one 
Father,  were  in  His  eyes  equally  dear ;  how  charity, 
mercy,  humility,  devotion  alone  would  make  them  worthy 
of  His  love  ;  and  at  these  words  there  rose  up  in  the 
fine  spirits  of  the  new  races  a  sense  of  brotherhood 
amongst  mankind,  a  desire  for  a  higher  life,  a  zeal  for 
all  the  gentler  qualities  and  the  higher  duties,  such  as 
the  world  had  not  seen  before.  Thus  was  her  first  task 
accomplished,  and.  she  founded  a  system  of  morality 
common  to  all  and  possible  to  all.  She  spoke  to  the 
slave  of  his  immortal  soul,  to  the  master  of  the  guilt  of 
slavery.  Master  and  slave  should  meet  alike  within  her 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  6/ 

walls,  and  lie  side  by  side  within  her  catacombs ;  and 
thus  her  second  task  was  accomplished,  and  she  over- 
threw for  ever  the  system  of  slavery,  and  raised  up  the 
labourer  into  the  dignity  of  a  citizen.  Then  she  told 
how  their  common  Master,  of  power  unbounded,  had 
loved  the  humble  and  the  weak.  She  told  of  the  simple 
lives  of  saints  and  martyrs,  their  tender  care  of  the 
poorer  brethren,  their  spirit  of  benevolence,  self-sacrifice, 
and  self-abasement ;  and  thus  the  third  great  task  was 
accomplished,  when  she  placed  the  essence  of  practical 
religion  in  care  for  the  weak,  in  affection  for  the  family, 
in  reverence  for  woman,  in  benevolence  to  all,  and  in 
personal  self-denial. 

Next,  she  undertook  to  educate  all  alike.  She  pro- 
vided a  body  of  common  teachers ;  she  organised  schools  ; 
she  raised  splendid  cathedrals,  where  all  might  be  brought 
into  the  presence  of  the  beautiful,  and  see  all  forms  of  art 
in  their  highest  perfection  —  architecture,  and  sculpture, 
and  painting,  and  work  in  glass,  in  iron,  and  in  wood, 
heightened  by  inspiring  ritual  and  touching  music.  She 
accepted  all  without  thought  of  birth  or  place.  She  gath- 
ered to  herself  all  the  knowledge  of  the  time,  though  all 
was  subordinate  to  religious  life.  The  priests,  so  far  as 
such  were  then  possible,  were  poets,  historians,  drama- 
tists, musicians,  architects,  sculptors,  painters,  judges, 
lawyers,  magistrates,  ministers,  students  of  science,  en- 
gineers, philosophers,  astronomers,  and  moralists.  Lastly, 
she  had  another  task,  and  she  accomplished  even  that.  It 
was  to  stand  between  the  tyrant  and  his  victim  ;  to  succour 
the  oppressed,  to  humble  the  evil  ruler,  to  moderate  the 
horrors  of  war;  above  all,  to  join  nation  to  nation,  to 
mediate  between  hostile  races,  to  give  to  civilised  Europe 
some  element  of  union  and  cohesion. 

Let  us  think  of  this  church  —  this  humanising  power 


68  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

of  the  Middle  Ages  —  as  it  was  in  its  glory,  not  in  its 
decay.  Let  us  remember  it  as  a  system  of  life  which 
for  ten  centuries  possessed  the  passionate  devotion  of  the 
foremost  spirits  of  their  time  ;  one  which  has  left  us  a 
rich  store  of  thought  and  teaching,  of  wise  precept, 
lofty  poetry,  and  matchless  devotion  ;  as  a  system  which 
really  penetrated  and  acted  on  the  lives  of  men.  Let 
us  think  of  it  as  it  was  in  essence  —  in  its  virtues,  not 
in  its  vices  —  truly  the  union  of  all  the  men  of  intel- 
lect and  character  of  their  age  towards  one  common  end  : 
not  like  Egyptian  priests,  pretending  to  govern  by  law ; 
not  like  Greek  philosophers,  expounding  to  a  chosen 
sect ;  not  like  modern  savants,  thinking  for  mere  love  of 
thought,  or  mere  love  of  fame,  without  method  or  con- 
cert, without  moral  guidance,  without  social  purpose  ;  but 
a  system  in  which  the  wisest  and  the  best  men  of  their 
day,  themselves  reared  in  a  common  teaching,  organised 
on  a  vast  scale,  and  directed  by  one  general  rule,  devoted 
the  whole  energies  of  their  brains  and  hearts  in  unison 
together,  to  the  moral  guidance  of  society  ;  sought  to  know 
only  that  they  might  teach,  to  teach  only  to  improve,  and 
lived  only  to  instruct,  to  raise,  to  humanise  their  fellow-men. 
Let  us  think  of  it  thus  as  it  was  at  its  best ;  and  in  this 
forget  even  the  cruelty,  the  imposture,  and  the  degrada- 
tion of  its  fall ;  let  horror  for  its  vices  and  pity  for  its 
errors  be  lost  in  one  sentiment  of  admiration,  gratitude, 
and  honour,  for  this  the  best  and  the  last  of  all,  the  organ- 
ised systems  of  human  society  ;  of  all  the  institutions  of 
mankind,  the  most  worthy  of  remembrance  and  regret. 

But  if  we  are  generous  in  our  judgment,  let  us  be  just. 
The  Catholic  system  ended,  it  is  most  true,  in  disastrous 
and  shameful  ruin.  Excellent  in  intention  and  in  method, 
it  was  from  the  first  doomed  to  inevitable  corruption  from 
the  inherent  faults  of  its  constitution  ;  and  its  intellectual 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  69 

basis  was  so  distorted  and  precarious,  that  it  was  stained 
with  vices  and  crimes  from  the  very  first  generation.  It 
had  trained  and  elevated  the  noblest  side  of  human  nature 
—  the  religious,  the  moral,  and  the  social  instincts  of  our 
being ;  and  the  energy  with  which  it  met  this,  the  prime 
want  of  men,  upheld  it  through  the  long  era  of  its  corrup- 
tion, and  still  upholds  it  in  its  last  pitiable  spasm.  But 
with  the  intellectual  and  with  the  practical  sphere  of  man's 
life  it  was  by  its  nature  incompetent  to  deal.  In  its  zeal 
for  man's  moral  progress  it  had  taken  its  stand  upon  a 
false  and  even  a  preposterous  belief.  Burning  to  sub- 
due the  lower  passions  of  man's  nature,  it  had  vainly 
hoped  to  crush  the  practical  instincts  of  his  activity.  It 
discarded  with  disdain  the  thoughts  and  labours  of  the 
ancient  world.  It  proclaimed  as  the  ideal  of  human  life 
a  visionary  and  even  a  selfish  asceticism.  For  a  period, 
for  a  long  period,  its  transcendent  and  indispensable 
services  maintained  it  in  spite  of  every  defect  and  vice  ; 
but  at  last  the  time  came  when  the  outraged  instincts 
reasserted  their  own,  and  showed  how  hopeless  is  any 
religion  or  system  of  life  not  based  on  a  conception  of 
human  nature  as  a  whole,  at  once  complete  and  true. 

The  church  began  in  indifference  towards  science  and 
contempt  for  material  improvement.  Indifference  and 
contempt  passed  at  length  into  hatred  and  horror ;  and  it 
ended  in  denouncing  science,  and  in  a  bitter  conflict  with 
industry.  At  last  it  had  become,  in  spite  of  its  better  self, 
the  enemy  of  all  progress,  all  thought,  all  industry,  .all 
freedom.  It  allied  itself  with  all  that  was  retrograde  and 
arbitrary.  It  fell  from  bad  to  worse,  and  settled  into  an 
existence  of  timid  repression.  Hence  it  came  that  the 
church,  attempting  to  teach  upon  a  basis  of  falsehood,  to 
direct  man's  active  life  upon  a  merely  visionary  creed,  to 
govern  a  society  which  it  only  half  understood,  succeeded 


7O  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

only  for  a  time.  It  was  scarcely  founded  before  it  began 
to  break  up.  It  had  scarcely  put  forth  its  strength  before 
it  began  to  decay.  It  stood  like  one  of  its  own  vast  cathe- 
drals, building  for  ages  yet  never  completed  ;  falling  to  ruin 
whilst  yet  unfinished ;  filling  us  with  a  sense  of  beauty 
and  of  failure ;  a  monument  of  noble  design  and  misdi- 
rected strength.  It  fell  like  the  Roman  empire,  with  pro- 
longed convulsion  and  corruption,  and  left  us  a  memory  of 
cruelty,  ignorance,  tyranny,  rapacity,  and  vice,  which  we 
too  often  forget  were  but  the  symptoms  and  consequences 
of  its  fall. 

We  have  stood  beside  the  rise  and  fall  of  four  great 
stages  of  the  history  of  mankind.  The  priestly  systems 
of  Asia,  the  intellectual  activity  of  Greece,  the  military 
empire  of  Rome,  the  moral  government  of  Catholicism, 
had  each  been  tried  in  turn,  and  each  had  been  found  want- 
ing. Each  had  disdained  the  virtues  of  the  others ;  each 
had  failed  to  incorporate  the  others.  With  the  fall  of  the 
Catholic  and  feudal  system,  we  enter  upon  the  age  of  mod- 
ern society.  It  is  an  age  of  dissolution,  reconstruction, 
variety,  movement,  and  confusion.  It  is  an  era  in  which 
all  the  former  elements  reassert  themselves  with  new  life, 
all  that  had  ever  been  attempted  is  renewed  again ;  an  era 
of  amazing  complexity,  industry,  and  force,  in  which  every 
belief,  opinion,  and  idea  is  criticised,  transformed,  and  ex- 
panded. Every  institution  of  society  and  habit  of  life  is 
thoroughly  unsettled  and  remodelled  ;  all  the  sciences  are 
constructed  —  art,  industry,  policy,  religion,  philosophy, 
and  morality  are  developed  with  a  vigorous  and  constant 
growth ;  but,  withal,  it  is  an  era  in  which  all  is  individual, 
separate,  and  free:  without  system,  or  unity,  or  harmony, 
such  as  had  marked  the  four  preceding  epochs. 

First,  the  feudal  system  broke  up  under  the  influence  of 
the  very  industry  which  it  had  itself  fostered  and  reared. 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  /I 

The  great  fiefs,  as  they  became  settled,  gradually  gathered 
into  masses  ;  one  by  one  they  fell  into  the  hands  of  kings, 
and  at  length  upon  the  ruins  of  feudalism  arose  the  great 
monarchies.  The  feudal  atoms  crystallised  into  the  actual 
nations  of  Europe.  The  variety  and  dispersion  of  the  feu- 
dal system  vanished.  A  central  monarchy  established  one 
uniform  order,  police,  and  justice ;  and  modern  political 
society,  as  we  know  it,  rose.  The  invention  of  gunpowder 
had  now  made  the  knight  helpless,  the  bullet  pierced  his 
mail,  and  standing  armies  took  the  place  of  the  feudal  mili- 
tia. The  discovery  of  the  compass  had  opened  the  ocean 
to  commerce.  The  free  towns  expanded  with  a  new  indus- 
try, and  covered  the  continent  with  infinitely  varied  prod- 
ucts. The  knight  became  the  landlord,  the  man-at-arms 
became  the  tenant,  the  serf  became  the  free  labourer,  and 
the  emancipation  of  the  worker,  the  first,  the  greatest 
victory  of  the  church,  was  complete. 

Thus,  at  last,  the  energies  of  men  ceased  to  be  occupied 
by  war,  to  which  a  small  section  of  the  society  was  now 
permanently  devoted.  Peace  became  in  fact  the  natural, 
not  the  accidental,  state  of  man.  Society  passed  into  its 
final  phase  of  industrial  existence.  Peace,  industry,  and 
wealth  again  gave  scope  to  thought.  The  riches  of  the 
earth  were  ransacked,  new  continents  were  opened,  inter- 
course increased  over  the  whole  earth.  Greeks,  flying 
from  Constantinople  before  the  Turks,  spread  over  Europe, 
bringing  with  them  books,  instruments,  inscriptions,  gems, 
and  sculptures:  —  the  science,  the- literature,  and  the  in- 
ventions of  the  ancient  world,  long  stored  up  on  the  shores 
of  the  Bosphorus.  Columbus  discovered  America.  The 
Portuguese  sailed  round  Africa  to  India ;  a  host  of  daring 
adventurers  penetrated  untraversed  seas  and  lands.  Man 
entered  at  last  upon  the  full  dominion  of  the  earth.  Co- 
pernicus, Kepler,  and  Galileo  unveiled  the  mystery  of  the 


72  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

world,  and  made  a  revolution  in  all  thought.  Mathematics, 
chemistry,  botany,  and  medicine,  preserved  mainly  by  the 
Arabs  during  the  Middle  Ages,  were  again  taken  up  almost 
from  the  point  where  the  Greeks  had  left  them.  The  ele- 
ments of  the  material  earth  were  eagerly  explored.  The 
system  of  experiment  (which  Bacon  reduced  to  a  method) 
was  worked  out  by  the  common  labour  of  philosophers  and 
artists.  For  the  first  time  the  human  form  was  dissected 
and  explored.  Physiology,  as  a  science,  began.  Human 
history  and  society  became  the  subject  of  regular  and  en- 
lightened thought.  Politics  became  a  branch  of  philosophy. 
With  all  this  the  new  knowledge  was  scattered  by  the 
printing-press,  itself  the  product  and  the  stimulus  of  the 
movement ;  in  a  word,  the  religious  ban  was  raised  from 
off  the  human  powers.  The  ancient  world  was  linked  on 
to  the  modern.  Science,  speculation,  and  invention  lived 
again  after  twelve  centuries  of  trance.  A  fresh  era  of 
progress  opened  with  the  new-found  treasures  of  the  past. 
Next,  before  this  transformation  of  ideas  the  church  col- 
lapsed. Its  hollow  dogmas  were  exposed,  its  narrow  prej- 
udices ridiculed,  its  corruptions  probed.  Men's  consciences 
and  brains  rose  up  against  an  institution  which  pretended 
to  teach  without  knowledge,  and  to  govern  though  utterly 
disorganised.  Convulsion  followed  on  convulsion ;  the 
struggle  we  call  the  Reformation  opened,  and  led  to  a 
series  of  religious  wars,  which  for  a  century  and  a  half 
shook  Europe  to  its  foundations.  At  the  close  of  this  long 
era  of  massacre  and  war,  it  was  found  that  the  result 
achieved  was  small  indeed.  Europe  had  been  split  into 
two  religious  systems,  of  which  neither  one  nor  the  other 
could  justify  its  enormous  pretensions.  Admiration  for 
the  noble  characters  of  the  first  Reformers,  for  their  inten- 
sity, truth,  and  zeal,  their  heroic  lives  and  deaths,  the  af- 
fecting beauty  of  their  purposes  and  hopes,  is  yet  possible 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  73 

to  us,  whilst  we  confess  that  the  Protestant,  like  the  Cath- 
olic faith,  had  failed  to  organise  human  industry,  society, 
and  thought ;  that  both  had  failed  to  satisfy  the  wants  and 
hopes  of  man.  More  and  more  have  thought  and  knowl- 
edge grown  into  even  fiercer  conflict  with  authority  of 
Book  or  Pope  ;  more  and  more  in  Catholic  France,  as  in 
Protestant  England,  does  the  moral  guidance  of  men  pass 
from  the  hands  of  priests,  or  sect,  to  be  assumed,  if  it  be 
assumed  at  all,  by  the  poet,  the  philosopher,  the  essayist, 
and  even  the  journalist ;  more  and  more  do  church  and 
sect  stand  dumb  and  helpless  in  presence  of  the  evils  with 
which  society  is  rife. 

Side  by  side  the  religious  and  the  political  system  tot- 
tered in  ruin  together.  From  the  close  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  now  one,  now  the  other  was  furiously  assailed. 
For  the  most  part,  both  were  struck  at  once.  The  long 
religious  wars  of  Germany  and  France ;  the  defence  by 
the  heroic  William  the  Silent  of  the  free  Republic  of  Hol- 
land against  the  might  of  Spain;  the  glorious  repulse  of 
its  Armada  by  England ;  the  immortal  revolution  achieved 
by  our  greatest  statesman,  Cromwell;  the  battle  of  his 
worthy  successor,  William  of  Orange,  against  the  oppres- 
sion of  Louis  xiv.,  were  all  but  parts  of  one  long  struggle, 
which  lasted  during  the  whole  of  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth centuries  —  a  struggle  in  which  religion  and  politics 
both  equally  shared,  a  struggle  between  the  old  powers  of 
Feudalism  and  Catholicism  on  the  one  side,  with  all  the 
strength  of  ancient  systems,  against  the  half-formed,  ill- 
governed  force  of  freedom,  industry,  and  thought ;  a  long 
and  varied  struggle  in  which  aristocracy,  monarchy,  privi- 
leged caste,  arbitrary  and  military  power,  church  formalism, 
dogmatism,  superstition,  narrow  teaching,  visionary  wor- 
ship, and  hollow  creeds,  were  each  in  turn  attacked,  and 
each  in  turn  prostrated. 


74  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

A  general  armistice  followed  this  long  and  exhausting 
struggle.  The  principles  of  Protestantism,  Constitution- 
alism, Toleration,  and  the  balance  of  power,  established 
a  system  of  compromise,  and  for  a  century  restored  some 
order  in  the  political  and  religious  world.  But  in  the 
world  of  ideas  the  contest  grew  still  keener.  Industry 
expanded  to  incredible  proportions,  and  the  social  system 
was  transformed  before  it.  Thought  soared  into  unimagined 
regions,  and  reared  a  new  realm  of  science,  discovery, 
and  art.  Wild  social  and  religious  visions  arose  and  passed 
through  the  spirit  of  mankind.  At  last  the  forms  and 
ideas  of  human  life,  material,  social,  intellectual,  an'd  moral, 
had  all  been  utterly  transformed,  and  the  fabric  of  Euro- 
pean society  rested  in  peril  on  the  crumbling  crust  of  the 
past. 

.  The  great  convulsion  came.  The  gathering  storm  of 
centuries  burst  at  length  in  the  French  Revolution.  Then, 
indeed,  it  seemed  that  chaos  was  come  again.  It  was 
an  earthquake  blotting  out  all  trace  of  what  had  been, 
engulfing  the  most  ancient  structures,  destroying  all  for- 
mer landmarks,  and  scattering  society  in  confusion  and 
dismay.  It  spreads  from  Paris  through  every  corner 
of  France,  from  France  to  Italy,  to  Spain,  to  Germany, 
to  England  ;  it  pierces,  like  the  flash  from  a  vast  storm- 
cloud,  through  every  obstacle  of  matter,  space,  or  form. 
It  kindles  all  ideas  of  men,  and  gives  wild  energy  to  all 
purposes  of  action.  For  though  terrible,  it  was  not  deadly. 
It  came  not  to  destroy  but  to  construct,  not  to  kill  but 
to  give  life.  And  through  the  darkest  and  bloodiest  whirl 
of  the  chaos  there  rose  up  clear  on  high,  before  the 
bewildered  eyes  of  men,  a  vision  of  a  new  and  greater  era 
yet  to  come  —  of  brotherhood,  of  freedom,  and  of  union, 
of  never-ending  progress,  of  mutual  help,  trust,  co-opera- 
tion, and  goodwill ;  an  era  of  true  knowledge,  of  real 


THE    CONNECTION    OF    HISTORY.  75 

science,  and  practical  discovery ;  but,  above  all,  an  era 
of  active  industry  for  all,  of  the  dignity  and  consecration 
of  labour,  of  a  social  life  just  to  all,  common  to  all,  and 
beneficent  to  all. 

That  great  revolution  is  not  ended.  The  questions  it 
proposed  are  not  yet  solved.  We  live  still  in  the  heav- 
ings  of  its  shock.  It  yet  remains  with  us  to  show  how 
the  last  vestiges  of  the  feudal,  hereditary,  and  aristo- 
cratic systems  may  give  place  to  a  genuine,  an  orderly, 
and  permanent  republic  ;  how  the  trammels  of  a  faith  long 
grown  useless  and  retrograde  may  be  removed  without 
injury  to  the  moral,  religious,  and  social  instincts,  which 
are  still  much  entangled  in  it ;  how  industry  may  be 
organised,  and  the  workman  enrolled  with  full  rights  of 
citizenship,  a  free,  a  powerful,  and  a  cultivated  member 
of  the  social  body.  Such  is  the  task  before  us.  The 
ground  is  all  prepared,  the  materials  are  abundant  and 
sufficient.  We  have  a  rich  harvest  of  science,  a  profusion 
of  material  facilities,  a  vast  collection  of  the  products, 
ideas,  and  inventions  of  past  ages.  Every  vein  of  human 
life  is  full ;  every  faculty  has  been  trained  to  full  efficiency  ; 
every  want  of  our  nature  is  supplied.  We  need  now  only 
harmony,  order,  union ;  we  need  only  to  group  into  a 
whole  these  powers  and  gifts :  the  task  before  us  is  to 
discover  some  complete  and  balanced  system  of  life  ;  some 
common  basis  of  belief;  some  object  for  the  imperishable 
religious  instincts  and  aspirations  of  mankind  ;•  some  faith 
to  bind  the  existence  of  man  to  the  visible  universe  around 
him  ;  some  common  social  end  for  thought,  action,  and 
feeling ;  some  common  ground  for  teaching,  studying,  or 
judging.  We  need  to  extract  the  essence  of  all  older 
forms  of  civilisation,  to  combine  them,  and  harmonise 
them  in  one,  a  system  of  existence  which  may  possess 
something  of  the  calm,  the  completeness,  and  the  sym- 


76  THE    MEANING   OF    HISTORY. 

metry  of  the  earliest  societies  of  men  ;  the  zeal  for  truth, 
knowledge,  science,  and  improvement,  which  marks  the 
Greek,  with  something  of  his  grace,  his  life,  his  radiant 
poetry  and  art ;  the  deep  social  spirit  of  Rome,  its  political 
sagacity,  its  genius  for  government,  law,  and  freedom,  its 
noble  sense  of  public  life ;  above  all  else,  the  constancy, 
earnestness,  and  tenderness  of  the  mediaeval  faith,  with 
its  discipline  of  devotion  to  the  service  of  a  Power  far 
greater  than  self,  with  its  zeal  for  the  spiritual  union  of 
mankind.  We  have  to  combine  these  with  the  industry, 
the  knowledge,  the  variety,  the  activity,  the  humanity, 
of  modern  life. 


CHAPTER  III. 

SOME    GREAT    BOOKS    OF    HISTORY. 

OF  all  subjects  of  study,  it  is  History  which  stands 
most  sorely  in  need  of  a  methodical  plan  of  reading.  The 
choice  of  books  is  nowhere  a  more  perplexing  task  :  for 
the  subject  is  practically  infinite ;  the  volumes  impossible 
to  number ;  and  the  range  of  fact  interminable.  There 
are  some  three  or  four  thousand  years  of  recorded  history, 
and  the  annals,  it  may  be,  of  one  hundred  different  peoples, 
each  forming  continuous  societies  of  men  during  many 
centuries.  Many  famous  histories  in  one  or  two  thousand 
pages  cover  at  most  about  half  a  century  :  and  that  for 
the  life  of  one  nation  alone.  Macaulay's  fascinating  story- 
book occupied  him,  we  are  told,  more  years  of  labour  to 
compose  than,  in  some  of  its  periods,  the  events  occupied 
in  fact.  A  brilliant  writer  has  given  us  twelve  picturesque 
volumes  which  almost  exactly  cover  the  life  of  one  queen. 
The  standard  history  of  France  extends  to  10,000  pages. 
And  it  is  whispered  at  Oxford  that  a  conscientious  annalist 
of  the  Civil  War  completes  the  history  of  each  year  in 
successive  volumes  by  the  continuous  study  of  an  equal 
period.  At  this  rate  forty  thousand  years  would  hardly 
suffice  to  compile  the  annals  of  mankind. 

In  this  infinite  sea  of  histories,  memoirs,  biographies, 
and  annals,  how  is  a  busy  man  to  choose  ?  He  cannot 
read  the  forty  thousand  volumes  —  nor  four  thousand, 
nor  four  hundred.  Which  are  the  most  needful  ?  which 
period,  which  movement,  which  people,  is  most  deserving 

77 


78  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

of  study  ?  When  I  say  study,  I  am  not  thinking  of 
students,  but  of  ordinary  fireside  reading  in  our  mother- 
tongue  for  busy  men  and  women  :  men  and  women  who 
cannot  give  their  whole  lives  to  libraries,  who,  'like  the 
ancient  Greeks,'  as  Disraeli  says,  know  no  language  but 
their  own,  and  who  are  not  going  in  for  competitive  ex- 
aminations —  if,  indeed,  these  islands  still  hold  man, 
woman,  boy,  or  girl  who  has  never  caught  that  mental 
influenza,  the  examination  plague.  Learned  persons  and 
literary  persons  (which  is  not  always  the  same  thing)  are 
apt  to  assume  that  every  one  has  of  course  read  all  the 
ordinary  books  ;  they  never  speak  about  '  standard '  works, 
in  every  gentleman's  library,  but,  alas !  not  always  in  every 
gentleman's  head.  They  give  little  help  to  the  general 
reader,  assuming  that  every  schoolboy  has  the  dynasties 
of  Egyptian  kings  at  his  finger's  end,  and  can  repeat  the 
list  of  the  Popes  backwards,  as  Macaulay  did.  No  doubt, 
as  schoolboys  and  schoolgirls,  the  week  after  we  had 
'  floored '  that  second  history  paper  in  the  final,  we  could 
most  of  us  perform  these  feats  of  memory.  But  many  of 
us  have  forgotten  these  dates  and  names,  have  got  rather 
mixed  about  our  Egyptian  dynasties,  and  are  even  some- 
what shaky  with  our  Bourbons,  Plantagenets,  and  Hohen- 
staufens.  To  those  of  us  in  such  a  case,  it  is  tantalising 
to  be  dazzled  by  the  learned  with  the  latest  cuneiform 
inscription,  or  the  last  newly  excavated  barrow,  which 
finally  decides  the  site  of  some  '  scuffle  of  kites  and  crows ' 
in  the  seventh  century. 

I  propose  to  myself  to  speak  about  a  few  simple  old 
books  of  general  history,  which  to  historians  and  the 
learned  are  matters  of  A  B  C  ;  just  as  Mr.  Cook's  obliging 
guides  personally  conduct  the  untravelled  to  Paris,  Venice, 
and  Rome.  We  are  as  ambitious  and  wide-roaming  nowa- 
days in  our  reading  as  in  our  touring.  The  travelled 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.  79 

world  hardly  considers  it  leaving  home,  unless  it  is  bound 
for  Central  Asia,  the  Pacific,  or  Fusiyama.  There  are, 
however,  still  some  fine  things  in  the  old  country  which 
every  one  has  not  seen  ;  and  my  humble  task  is  simply 
to  act  as  cicerone  to  those  who  seek  to  visit  for  the  first 
time  in  their  lives  the  great  fields  of  eternal  history,  who 
have  but  limited  time  at  their  disposal,  who  could  not  find 
their  way  without  a  guide,  and  speak  no  foreign  tongue. 

Without  some  organic  unity  in  its  conception,  history 
tends  to  become  literary  curiosity  and  display,  weakening 
our  mental  force  rather  than  strengthening  it.  History 
cannot  mean  the  record  of  all  the  facts  that  ever  hap- 
pened and  the  biographies  of  all  those  whose  lives  are 
recorded  ;  for  these  are  infinite.  There  is  a  type  of  book- 
man, most  frequently  met  with  in  Germany,  to  whom  the 
reading  and  the  making  of  books  seem  to  be  functions  of 
nature,  as  it  is  a  function  of  nature  for  the  cow  to  eat 
grass  and  to  give  milk  ;  men  to  whom  it  is  a  matter  of 
absolute  unconcern  what  is  the  subject  of  the  book,  the 
matter,  origin,  or  ultimate  use  of  the  book,  provided  only 
the  book  be  new.  If  a  vacant  gap  can  be  discovered  in 
the  jungle  of  books  where  a  spare  hole  can  be  filled,  it 
matters  no  more  to  the  author  what  end  the  book  may 
serve,  than  it  concerns  the  cow  what  becomes  of  its  milk. 
The  cow  has  to  secrete  fresh  milk,  and  the  author  has  to 
secrete  a  new  work.  And  there  is  a  type  of  historian  to 
whom  all  human  events  are  equally  material.  It  is  not 
the  historian's  concern,  they  think,  to  pick  and  choose,  or  to 
prefer  one  fact  to  another.  All  facts  accurately  recorded 
are  truth  :  and  to  set  them  forth  in  a  very  big  octavo  volume 
is  history. 

The  true  object  of  history  is  to  show  us  the  life  of  the 
human  race  in  its  fulness,  and  to  follow  up  the  tale  of 
its  continuous  and  difficult  evolution.  The  conception  of 


8O  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

the  progress  of  civilisation  in  intelligible  sequence,  is  the 
greatest  achievement  of  modern  thought.  History  is  the 
biography  of  civilised  man :  it  can  no  more  be  cut  into 
absolute  sections  than  can  the  biography  of  a  single  life. 
And  to  devote  our  sole  interest  to  some  small  period, 
country,  or  race  is  as  rational  as  it  would  be  to  take  a  few 
years  to  stand  for  the  life-story  of  a  great  hero.  That 
human  history  makes  one  intelligible  biography  does  not 
imply  that  we  have  to  load  our  memories  with  an  intermi- 
nable roll  of  facts,  dates,  and  names.  This  long  record 
may  be  grouped  into  a  manageable  series  of  dominant 
phases.  To  understand  the  spirit  and  character  of  each 
of  these  phases  is  the  root  of  the  matter.  The  events  and 
persons  are  manifestations  of  that  character,  and  serve  to 
illustrate  and  vivify  the  spirit.  History  becomes  'the  old 
almanack '  which  the  dull  cynic  called  it,  when  we  treat  it 
from  the  photographic,  the  local,  the  tribal  point  of  view, 
instead  of  the  human  and  the  organic  point  of  view. 

Neither  recondite  researches  nor  novel  theories  are 
needed  to  decide  what  are  the  leading  epochs  and  domi- 
nant phases  in  general  history.  The  world  has  long  been 
agreed  upon  them,  with  some  variations  in  detail,  and 
modifications  in  the  manner  of  subsections.  For  practical 
purposes  they  may  be  grouped  into  six. 

I.  The  Early  Oriental  Theocracies.  —  These  are  the 
great  stationary  systems,  held  together  by  dominant  relig- 
ious discipline,  and  the  pressure  of  social  custom.  The 
types  of  these  are  the  Egyptian,  Assyrian,  Persian,  and 
Indian  theocratic  monarchies,  and  the  variations  we  find 
in  the  Chinese,  Buddhist,  Japanese  empires,  or  to  some 
extent  in  modern  Mahometan  kingdoms.  These  account 
for  vast  periods  of  history,  and  for  far  the  largest  portions 
of  the  planet. 


SOME    GREAT    BOOKS    OF    HISTORY.  8 1 

It  is  specially  significant  that  the  Fetichist,  or  spontane- 
ous Nature-worshipping  epochs  of  human  life,  have  no  re- 
corded history ;  although  they  form  far  the  longest  epochs 
in  time,  and  are  far  the  most  extensive  in  space.  History, 
in  the  sense  of  recorded  fact,  is  one  of  the  fine  creations 
of  Theocracy  and  the  great  sacerdotal  state-organisations. 
The  history  of  the  Nature-worshippers  has  to  be  gathered 
from  analogy,  remnants,  and  extant  tribes.  It  has  neither 
record,  names,  dates,  nor  facts. 

II.  The  Rise  and  Development  of  the  Greek  World.  — 
This  involves  the  story  of  the  separate  republics,  of  the 
intellectual  activity,  personal  freedom,  and  individual  self- 
assertion  characteristic  of  the  Hellenic  spirit.     If  a  sub- 
section were  here  inserted,  it  would  be  (II.  fr)  the  rise, 
development,  and  dissolution  of  Alexander's  empire. 

III.  The  Rise  and  Consolidation  of  the  Roman  World. 
—  The  origin  of  the  Republic,  the  formation  of  the  dicta- 
torial system,  the  ultimate   dissolution  of  the  bifurcated 
Roman  empire.      Here  also,  if  subsections  were  inserted, 
the  period  of  a  thousand  years  falls  into  two  divisions  :  (a) 
that  of  the  Republic,  down  to  Julius  Caesar ;  (b}  that  of 
the  Empire,  down  to  Justinian. 

IV.  The   Catholic  and  Feudal   World :   known    as    the 
Middle    Ages.  —  This    epoch,   though   it    has   the  double 
aspect,  Catholic  and  Feudal,  cannot  be  grouped  into  divis- 
ions.    For  Catholicism  and  Feudalism  are  contemporary, 
co-ordinate,  and  indissolubly  associated  movements.     They 
imply  each  other.     They  are  converse  phases  ;  but  not  suc- 
cessive or  distinct  epochs. 

V.  The  Formation  and  Development  of  the  Great  Euro- 
pean States. — This  includes  the  rise  and  growth  of  the 


82  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

monarchies  of  modern  times — the  Renascence  of  Learn- 
ing, with  Humanism,  the  Reformation,  and  what  we  call 
Modern  History  proper,  down  to  the  last  century. 

This  is  one  of  the  most  complex  of  all  the  epochs  :  and 
it  may  properly  be  divided  into  subsections  thus  :  — 

V.(a)  The  rise  and  consolidation  of  the  State  System 
of  modern  Europe,  with  the  intellectual  and 
artistic  revival  that  followed  it. 

V.(£)  The  rise,  issue,  and  settlement  of  the  anti-Cath- 
olic Reformation,  and  the  religious  wars  that 
it  involved,  down  to  the  Peace  of  Westphalia. 

V.(c)  The  struggle  between  the  monarchical  and  the 
republican  principles  in  Italy,  Switzerland, 
Spain,  Holland,  and  England. 

V.(dT)  The  great  territorial  and  mercantile  wars  in 
Europe,  and  the  struggle  for  the  Balance  of 
Power,  down  to  the  close  of  the  Seven  Years' 
War. 

VI.  The  Political  and  Industrial  Revohition  of  the 
Modern  World.  —  This  would  include  the  rise  and  consoli- 
dation of  Prussia,  of  the  United  States  ;  the  intellectual, 
scientific,  and  industrial  revolution  of  the  last  century ; 
the  French  Revolution,  and  the  wars  that  issued  out  of 
it ;  the  development  of  transmarine  empires  and  interna- 
tional communication  ;  Democracy  and  Socialism  in  their 
various  types. 

These  six  great  phases  of  human  civilisation  may  be 
mentally  kept  apart  for  purposes  of  clear  thought,  and  as 
wide  generalisations  ;  but  some  of  them  practically  overlap, 
and  blend  into  each  other.  And  it  is  only  whilst  we  keep 
our  eyes  intent  on  the  world's  stage,  rather  than  some 
local  movement,  that  these  phases  appear  to  be  distinct. 
The  vast  ages  of  the  Eastern  and  Egyptian  Theocracies 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.  83 

are  separate  enough  both  in  time  and  in  spirit.  But  the 
Greek  and  Roman  worlds  are  to  some  extent  contempo- 
rary, and  at  last  they  melt  into  one  compound  whole,  when 
Rome  incorporated  Greece  :  its  territory,  literature,  culture, 
and  art.  The  whole  mental  apparatus,  and  finally  the 
manners,  of  the  empire  became  Greek ;  until  at  last  the 
capital  of  the  Roman  world  was  transferred  to  a  Greek 
city,  and  the  so-called  '  Romans '  spoke  Greek  and  not 
Latin.  Thus  we  may,  for  many  purposes,  treat  the  Graeco- 
Roman  world  as  one  :  and  in  fact  combine  the  second  and 
the  third  epochs. 

What  we  call  the  Mediaeval  phase  is  very  sharply  marked 
off  from  its  predecessor  by  the  spread  of  Christianity ; 
and  it  seems  easy  enough  to  distinguish  our  fourth  from  our 
third  epoch,  both  in  time  and  in  character.  But  this  holds 
good  only  for  Europe  as  a  whole ;  and  it  is  not  so  easy,  if 
we  take  Byzantine  history  by  itself,  to  determine  the  point 
at  which  the  imperial  government  at  Constantinople  ceases 
to  be  Graeco-Roman,  and  begins  to  be  Mediaeval.  Nor, 
indeed,  is  it  quite  easy  to  fix  a  date  or  a  name,  when  the 
Papacy  ceased  to  belong  to  the  ancient  world,  and  came 
to  be  the  spiritual  centre  of  the  mediaeval  world.  Again, 
the  modern  world  is  very  definitely  marked  off  from  the 
mediaeval,  and  we  can  with  precision  fix  on  the  second 
half  of  the  fifteenth  century  as  the  date  of  its  definitive 
settlement.  But  if  we  keep  our  attention  solely  on  the 
history  of  .the  church,  of  literature,  or  of  thought,  the  dis- 
solution of  the  mediaeval  world  is  seen  to  be  preparing 
quite  a  century  earlier  than  the  taking  of  Constantinople 
by  the  Turks. 

Our  sixth  epoch,  the  age  of  the  Revolution,  is  only  the 
rapid  and  violent  form  of  a  process  which  has  been  going 
on  since  the  general  use  of  printing,  of  guns,  and  the  era 
of  ocean  trade  and  accumulated  wealth.  It  had  been  in 


84  THE    MEANING   OF    HISTORY. 

operation  in  all  the  attacks  on  the  Catholic  doctrines  and 
institutions,  in  the  revival  of  ancient  learning  and  the 
advance  of  science,  in  the  consolidation  of  the  European 
kingdoms  ;  and  even  long  before  in  the  labours  of  such 
men  as  Roger  Bacon,  Dante,  Langland,  Wickliffe,  Huss, 
and  Bruno.  For  these  reasons  the  revolutionary  agitation 
of  the  last  century  and  a  half,  is  nothing  but  the  more 
intense  and  conscious  form  of  the  movement  to  found  a 
new  modern  world  which  began  with  the  decay  of  Catholi- 
cism and  Feudalism. 

Therefore,  if  we  are  desirous  of  keeping  in  the  highest 
generalisations  of  history,  and  indeed  for  many  practical 
purposes,  the  six  great  epochs  of  universal  history  may  be 
reduced  to  these  four :  — 

1.  The  Ancient  Monarchies  —  or  the  Theocratic  age. 

2.  The  GrcEco-Roman  world —  or  the  Classical. 

3.  The  Catholic  and  Feudal  world —  or  the  Medieval. 

4.  The  Modern  —  or  the  Revolutionary  world  of  Free 
Thought  and  Free  Life. 

These  dominant  epochs  (whether  we  treat  them  as  six 
or  as  grouped  into  four)  should  each  be  kept  co-ordinate 
and  clear  in  our  minds,  as  mutually  dependent  on  each 
other,  and  each  as  an  inseparable  part  of  a  living  whole. 
No  conception  of  history  would  be  adequate,  or  other  than 
starved  and  stunted,  which  entirely  kept  out  of  sight 
any  one  of  these  indispensable  and  characteristic  epochs. 
They  are  all  indissoluble  ;  yet  utterly  different,  and  radi- 
cally contrasted,  just  as  the  child  is  to  the  man,  or  the 
man  to  the  woman  ;  and  for  the  same  reason  —  that  they 
are  forms  of  one  organic  humanity. 

It  follows,  that  it  is  not  at  all  the  history  of  our  own 
country  which  is  all-important,  overshadowing  all  the  rest, 
nor  the  history  of  the  times  nearest  to  our  own.  From 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.  85 

the  spiritual,  and  indeed  the  scientific,  point  of  view,  if 
history  be  the  continuous  biography  of  the  evolution  of 
the  human  race,  it  may  well  be  that  the  history  of  remoter 
times,  which  have  the  least  resemblance  to  our  own,  may 
often  be  the  more  valuable  to  us,  as  correcting  national 
prejudices  and  the  narrow  ideas  bred  in  us  by  daily  custom, 
whilst  it  is  the  wider  outlook  of  universal  history  that 
alone  can  teach  us  all  the  vast  possibilities  and  latent 
forces  in  human  society,  and  the  incalculable  limits  of 
variation  which  are  open  to  man's  civilisation.  The  history 
of  other  races,  and  of  very  different  systems,  may  be  of 
all  things  the  best  to  correct  our  insular  vanities,  and  our 
conventional  prejudices.  We  have  indeed  to  know  the 
history  of  our  own  country,  of  the  later  ages.  But  the 
danger  is,  that  we  may  know  little  other  history. 

Thus  one  who  had  a  grasp  on  the  successive  phases 
of  civilisation  from  the  time  of  Moses  until  our  own  day  ; 
vividly  conceiving  the  essential  features  of  Egyptian, 
Assyrian,  Chaldean,  and  Persian  society ;  who  felt  the 
inner  heart  of  the  classical  world,  and  who  was  in  touch 
with  the  soul  of  the  mediaeval  religion  and  chivalry  — 
would  know  more  of  true  history  than  one  who  was  simply 
master  of  the  battles  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
could  catalogue,  with  dates  and  names,  the  annals  of  each 
German  duchy,  and  each  Italian  republic.  No  doubt,  for 
college  examinations,  they  wring  from  raw  lads,  as  Milton 
says,  '  like  blood  from  the  nose,'  the  details  of  the  Saxon 
coinage,  and  the  latest  German  theory  of  the  mark-system. 
These  things  are  essential  to  examinations  and  prizes,  and 
the  good  boy  will  give  his  whole  mind  to  them.  But  they 
are  far  from  essential  to  an  intelligible  understanding 
of  the  course  which  has  been  followed  in  the  marvellous 
unfolding  of  our  human  destiny.  To  see  this,  in  all  the 
imposing  unity  of  the  great  drama,  it  is  not  enough  to  be 


86  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

crammed  with  catalogues  of  official  and  military  incidents. 
It  is  needful  to  have  a  living  sense  of  the  characteristic 
types  of  life  which  succeeded  each  other  in  such  glaring 
contrast,  and  often  with  such  deadly  hatred,  through  the 
dominant  phases  of  man's  society  on  earth. 

Our  present  business  is  to  select  a  small  choice  of  books 
of  history,  which  are  of  permanent  and  daily  resource  to 
the  general  reader  of  English,  and  which  have  that  charm 
and  force  of  insight  that  no  manual  or  school-book  can 
possess.  And  we  may  begin  with  the  fountain-head  of 
primitive  story,  with  the  Father  of  history  —  Herodotus. 
Every  one  who  reads  seriously  at  all,  every  man,  woman, 
and  child  who  has  ideas  of  any  book  above  a  yellow-covered 
novel,  should  know  something  of  this  most  simple,  fascinat- 
ing, and  instructive  of  historians.  In  schools  and  colleges 
a  thorough  mastery  of  Herodotus  has  long  been  the  foun- 
dation of  a  historical  education.  But  he  deserves  to  be 
the  familiar  friend  of  every  sensible  reader. 

This  is  the  oldest  volume  of  secular  history  that  has 
reached  us  in  anything  like  a  complete  state :  and  here  in 
'the  earliest  books  of  Herodotus  we  may  watch  the  first 
naive  expression  of  the  insatiable  curiosity  of  the  Hellenic 
mind  brought  face  to  face  with  the  primeval  theocracies  of 
the  Oriental  world.  It  is  a  source  of  perennial  delight  to 
observe  how  the  keen,  busy,  inquisitive,  fearless  Greek 
comes  up  to  the  venerable  monuments  of  the  East,  and 
probes  them  with  his  critical  acumen.  We  may  gather 
rich  lessons  in  philosophy,  and  not  merely  lessons  in  his- 
tory and  the  story  of  man's  progress,  if  we  follow  up  this 
European,  logical,  eager,  and  almost  modern  observer,  as 
he  analyses  and  recounts  the  ways  of  the  unchanging  Past 
in  Africa  or  in  Asia.  We  seem  to  be  standing  beside  the 
infant  lispings  of  critical  judgment,  at  the  cradle  of  our 
social  and  political  institutions,  at  the  first  tentative  steps 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.  8/ 

of  that  long  development  of  society  which  has  brought  us 
to  the  world  of  to-day.  What  a  prolonged  epic  of  revolu- 
tion in  thought  and  in  politics  lay  hid  in  such  a  phrase  of 
Herodotus  as  this  :  '  The  priests  do  say,  but  I  think  — /  or 
in  the  tale  of  the  map  of  Hecataeus,  or  the  embassy  of 
Aristagoras  to  the  Greeks  of  the  mainland  !  We  trace 
this  Greek  inquirer  stepping  up  to  these  colossi  of  an 
incalculable  antiquity,  with  the  free  and  bold  mind  of  a 
modern  savant  exploring  an  Egyptian  tomb  or  some  pre- 
historic barrow,  combined  it  may  be  with  no  small  measure 
of  the  ignorant  and  contemptuous  wonder  of  the  ruder 
conqueror.  In  Herodotus  we  see  a  bright  and  varied 
picture  of  the  whole  of  the  primitive  types  of  civilisation, 
and  the  first  stirrings  of  fiery  aspiration  in  the  genius  of 
movement  as  it  gazed  into  the  motionless  features  of  the 
genius  of  permanence  embodied  in  the- Sphinx  of  the  Nile 
valley. 

It  was  the  fashion  once  to  disparage  the  good  faith 
of  Herodotus,  and  to  ridicule  his  childlike  credulity,  his 
garrulous  inconsequence,  and  his  gratuitous  guessing  on 
matters  both  spiritual  and  physical.  But  there  is  now  a 
reaction  of  opinion.  And  if  Herodotus  is  not  an  exact 
observer  nor  a  scientific  reasoner,  there  is  a  disposition  to 
admit  more  of  foundation  for  some  of  his  travellers'  tales 
than  was  at  first  supposed.  Nay,  recent  explorations  and 
excavations  both  in  Africa  and  in  Asia  have  confirmed 
some  of  his  most  suspicious  reports  ;  and,  at  any  rate,  we 
may  follow  those  who  think  that  he  was  doing  his  best  with 
the  sources  of  information  before  him.  And  it  is  clear 
that  the  earliest  inquiries  of  all,  in  a  field  so  vast  and 
comprehensive,  could  only  be  made  in  a  manner  thus  un- 
systematic and  casual.  Where  scientific  verification  is 
not  possible,  it  is  well  to  have  a  variety  of  working  hypoth- 
eses. Hearsay  evidence,  indeed,  is  anything  but  good 


88  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

evidence.  But,  where  strict  evidence  is  not  to  be  had,  it 
is  useful,  in  great  and  decisive  events,  to  collect  all  the 
hearsay  evidence  that  is  forthcoming  at  all.  And  this  is 
what  Herodotus  did.  He  is  no  great  philosopher  in  things 
social  or  in  things  physical.  But  he  had  that  which  the 
whole  Eastern  world  and  all  the  wisdom  of  the  Egyptians 
could  not  produce,  which  the  wealth  of  Persia  could  not 
buy,  nor  the  priests  of  Babylon  discover.  He  had  that 
observant,  inquisitive,  critical  eye  that  ultimately  devel- 
oped into  Greek  philosophy  and  science  —  the  eye  that  let 
slip  nothing  in  Nature  or  in  Man — the  mind  that  never 
rested  till  it  had  found  some  working  hypothesis  to  account 
for  every  new  and  striking  phenomenon.  It  is  the  first 
dawn  of  the  modern  spirit. 

This  most  delightful  of  all  story-books  is  abundantly 
open  to  the  English  reader.  There  are  several  transla- 
tions, and  for  some  purposes  Herodotus,  whose  style  is 
one  of  artless  conversation,  may  be  read  in  English  almost 
as  well  as  in  the  Greek.  In  the  elaborate  work  of  Canon 
Rawlinson  we  have  a  good  translation,  with  abundant  his- 
torical and  antiquarian  illustrations  by  the  Canon  and  by 
Sir  Henry  Rawlinson,  with  maps,  plans,  and  many  draw- 
ings. Herodotus  preserves  to  us  the  earliest  consecutive 
account  that  the  West  has  recorded  of  the  ancient  em- 
pires of  the  East.  And,  although  his  record  is  both  casual 
and  vague,  it  serves  as  a  basis  round  which  the  researches 
of  recent  Orientalists  may  be  conveniently  grouped,  just 
as  Blackstone  and  Coke  form  the  text  of  so  many  manuals 
of  law,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  both  are  so  largely  ob- 
solete. To  use  Herodotus  with  profit  we  need  such  a 
systematic  Manual  of  Ancient  History  as  that  of  Heeren. 
This  book,  originally  published  in  1799,  and  continued  and 
corrected  by  the  author  down  to  the  year  1828,  although 
now  in  many  respects  rendered  obsolete  by  subsequent 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.  89 

discoveries,  remains  an  admirable  model  of  the  historical 
summary.  Unfortunately  it  requires  so  many  corrections 
and  additions  that  it  can  hardly  be  taken  as  the  current 
text-book,  all  the  more  that  the  English  translation  itself, 
published  in  1829  at  Oxford,  is  not  very  easily  procured. 
For  all  practical  purposes,  the  book  is  now  superseded  by 
Canon  Rawlinson's  Manual  of  Ancient  History,  Oxford, 
1878,  which  follows  the  plan  of  Heeren,  covers  nearly  the 
same  period,  and  treats  of  the  same  nations.  It  is,  in  fact, 
the  Manual  of  Heeren  corrected,  rewritten,  supplemented, 
and  brought  up  to  that  date,  somewhat  overburdened  with 
the  masses  of  detail,  wanting  in  the  masterly  conciseness 
of  the  great  Professor  of  Gottingen,  but  embodying  the 
learning  and  discoveries  of  three  later  generations. 

But  Egyptology  and  Assyriology  are  unstable  quick- 
sands in  which  every  few  years  the  authorities  become 
obsolete  by  the  discovery  of  fresh  records  and  relics. 
Professor  Sayce,  the  principal  exponent  of  the  untrust- 
worthiness  of  Herodotus,  assures  us  that  Canon  Raw- 
linson  and  his  coadjutors  have  now  become  obsolete 
themselves,  and  that  the  history  of  the  plains  of  the 
Nile  and  the  Euphrates  must  again  be  rewritten.  But 
the  tendency  to-day  is,  perhaps,  inclined  to  treat  the 
discoveries  on  which  Professor  Sayce  relies  as  neither  so 
certain  nor  so  important  as  he  was  once  disposed  to 
think.  For  the  general  reader  it  may  be  enough  to  rely 
on  Max  Dunker's  History  of  Antiquity  (6  vols.,  translated 
1878  ;  see  vols.  i.  and  ii.  for  Egypt  and  Assyria). 

There  is  another  mode,  besides  that  of  books,  whereby 
much  of  the  general  character  of  Oriental  civilisation  may 
be  learned.  That  is,  by  pictures,  illustrations,  models, 
monuments,  and  the  varied  collections  to  be  found  in  our 
own  Museum,  in  the  Louvre  at  Paris,  and  other  collec- 
tions of  Oriental  antiquities.  Thousands  of  holiday-makers 


9<D  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

saunter  through  these  galleries,  and  gaze  at  the  figures 
in  a  vacant  stare.  But  this  is  not  to  learn  at  all.  The 
monuments  and  cases,  wall-paintings  and  relics,  require 
patient  and  careful  study  with  appropriate  books.  The 
excellent  handbooks  of  our  Museum  will  make  a  good 
beginning,  but  the  monuments  of  Egypt  and  Assyria  are 
hardly  intelligible  without  complete  illustrated  explanation. 
These  are,  for  Egypt,  the  dissertations,  notes,  and  wood- 
cuts by  various  Egyptologists  in  Canon  Rawlinson's 
English  Herodotus ;  in  Sir  Gardner  Wilkinson's  great 
work  on  the  Manners  and  Ciistoms  of  the  Ancient  Egyp- 
tians, 1837;  and  his  Handbook  for  Egypt,  1858. 

The  facts,  dates,  persons,  and  incidents  of  Egyptian 
history  are  still  the  problems  of  recondite  archaeology. 
The  spirit  of  Egyptian  civilisation  may  be  grasped,  without 
any  copious  reading,  by  any  one  who  will  seriously  study 
instead  of  stare  at  the  great  Egyptian  collections.  Much 
may  be  learned,  though  in  far  less  degree,  by  those  who 
will  study  the  Asiatic  antiquities  with  such  works  as 
Layard's  Nineveh,  Fergusson's  History  of  Architecture, 
Canon  Rawlinson's  Five  Great  Monarchies,  and  the  dis- 
sertations in  his  English  Herodotus.  And  much  may  be 
learned  from  Professor  Sayce's  Ancient  Empires  of  the 
East,  and  from  the  recent  series  of  the  Story  of  the 
Nations.  These  are  unequal  in  execution,  and  avowedly 
popular  and  elementary  in  design  :  but  they  are  plain, 
cheap,  accessible  to  all,  and  contain  the  most  recent 
general  views.  Brugsch's  great  History  of  Egypt,  trans- 
lated 1879-1881,  is  rather  a  book  for  the  special  student 
of  history  than  for  the  general  reader. 

It  is  not  every  reader  who  has  leisure  to  master  such 
a  book  as  Rawlinson's  English  Herodotus.  But  some- 
thing of  this  fountain  of  history  all  may  know.  Even 
in  such  a  pleasant  boy's  book  as  Mr.  Church's  Stories 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.  9! 

from  the  East  and  Stories  from  Herodotus  we  get  some 
flavour  of  the  fine  old  Greek  traveller.  There  are  three 
great  sections  of  Herodotus  which  are  of  special  interest: 

1.  the    history    of    the   foundation   of    Cyrus'    kingdom ; 

2.  the  books  on  the  history,  antiquities,  and  customs  of 
Egypt ;  3.  the  immortal  story  of  Marathon,  Thermopylae, 
and    Salamis.     Literature    contains    no    more    enthralling 
page  than  the  tale  by  the  father  of   prose  how  the  first 
great  duel  between  the  East  and  the  West  ended  in  the 
most  momentous  victory  recorded  in  the  annals  of  man- 
kind.    Every  educated  man   should    know  by  heart   the 
wonderful  story :  how  the  virtue  of  Aristides,  the  daring 
of  Miltiades,  the  heroism  of  Leonidas,  and  the  genius  of 
Themistocles    saved    the   infant    civilisation    of    Western 
Europe  from  the  fate  which  overtook  the  far  more  culti- 
vated races  of  Syria  and  Asia  Minor.     A  distinguished 
Indian  Mussulman,  himself  of  the  race  of  the  Prophet,  is 
wont  to  bewail  the  defeat  of  Xerxes  as  the  greatest  dis- 
aster in  history.     But  for  that,  he  says,  the  vanguard  of 
civilisation  would  have  advanced  on  Asiatic,  and  not  on 
European,   lines ;    on    Theocratic   instead   of   Democratic 
principles.     The  theology  of   the  learned    Syed  may  be 
impeached  ;  but  his  history  is  sound. 

One  other  Greek  book  of  history  all  should  know, 
perhaps  the  greatest  of  all  histories,  that  of  the  Athenian 
Thucydides.  Now  Thucydides  was  in  pre-eminent  degree 
what  Herodotus  was  not  —  a  strictly  scientific  historian; 
one  whose  conception  of  the  canons  of  historic  precision 
has  never  been  surpassed,  against  whom  hardly  a  single 
error  of  fact,  hardly  a  single  mistaken  judgment,  has  ever 
been  brought  home.  Thucydides  is  much  more  than  a 
great  historian  ;  or,  rather,  he  was  what  every  great  his- 
torian ought  to  be  —  he  was  a  profound  philosopher.  His 
history  of  the  Peloponnesian  War  is  like  a  portrait  by 


92  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

Titian  :  the  whole  mind  and  character,  the  inner  spirit 
and  ideals,  the  very  tricks  and  foibles,  of  the  man  or  the 
age  come  before  us  in  living  reality.  No  more  memorable, 
truthful,  and  profound  portrait  exists  than  that  wherein 
Thucydides  has  painted  the  Athens  of  the  age  of  Pericles. 
Athens  in  the  age  of  Pericles,  and  under  the  guidance 
of  Pericles,  reached  one  of  those  ^supreme  moments  in 
the  varying  course  of  civilisation  which,  like  the  best 
dramas  of  Shakespeare  or  the  Madonnas  of  Raphael, 
are  incomparable  creations  of  the  human  faculties  stand- 
ing apart  for  ever.  With  all  its  vices,  follies,  and  little- 
ness, nothing  like  it  had  ever  been  seen  before,  nothing 
like  it  can  ever  be  seen  again.  It  embodied  originality, 
simplicity,  beauty,  audacity,  and  grace,  with  a  fulness 
and  harmony  which  the  weary  world,  the  heir  of  all  the 
ages,  can  never  recall.  And  in  Thucydides  it  found 
the  philosopher  who  penetrated  to  its  inmost  soul,  and 
the  artist  who  could  paint  it  with  living  touch.  How  : 
memorable  are  those  monumental  phrases  which  he  puts 
into  the  mouth  of  his  favourite  hero  or  claims  for  his  own 
work  !  '  My  history/  he  says,  'is  an  everlasting  possession, 
not  a  prize  composition  which  is  heard  and  forgotten.' 
'  We  men  of  Athens  know  how  to  cultivate  the  mind 
without  losing  our  manhood,  and  to  create  beauty  without 
extravagant  costliness.'  'We  count  the  man  who  cares 
nothing  for  the  public  weal  as  a  worthless  nuisance,  and 
not  simply  an  inoffensive  nonentity.'  'All  citizens  take 
their  share  of  the  public  burdens  :  all  are  free  to  offer 
their  opinion  in  the  public  concerns.'  'We  have  no  cast- 
iron  system  :  every  man  with  us  is  free  to  live  his  own 
life.'  'Life  is  harmonised  by  our  civic  festivals  and  our 
personal  refinement.'  'The  whole  earth  is  the  funeral 
monument  of  those  who  live  a  noble  life  :  their  epitaph  is 
graven,  not  on  stone,  but  on  the  hearts  of  men.' 


SOME    GREAT    BOOKS    OF    HISTORY.  93 

Thucydides,  alas  !  is  not  like  Herodotus,  easy  to  read  and 
simple  in  his  thought  and  language.  His  only,  and  very 
moderate,  volume  (a  single  copy  of  the  Times  newspaper 
contains  as  many  words)  is  very  close  reading :  crammed 
with  profound  thought,  epigrammatic,  intricate,  obscure, 
and  most  peculiar  in  the  turn  of  conglomerate  phrase. 
But  in  the  masterly  translation  of  Dr.  Jowett,  and  with 
the  paraphrase  and  illustrations  in  the  corresponding  part 
of  Grote's  History  of  Greece,  he  may  be  read  without  diffi- 
culty by  every  serious  reader.  All  at  least  should  know 
his  resplendent  picture  of  Pericles,  and  the  Periclean  ideal 
of  Athens,  an  ideal  as  usual  only  reached  by  a  few  exalted 
spirits,  and  by  them,  but  for  a  moment  of  glowing  inspira- 
tion—  an  ideal  of  which  we  have  the  grotesque  obverse  in 
the  wild  comedies  of  Aristophanes.  All  too  should  know 
the  story  of  Cleon  and  of  Alcibiades,  the  terrible  scene 
of  the  plague  at  Athens,  and  the  ghastly  insurrection  at 
Corcyra,  and  perhaps  the  most  stirring  of  all,  the  over- 
throw of  Athens  in  the  port  of  Syracuse.  I  can  remember 
how,  when  I  read  that  within  sight  of  the  heights  of 
Epipola3  and  the  fountain  of  Arethusa,  it  seemed  as  if  the 
bay  around  me  still  rang  with  the  shout  of  triumph  and 
the  wail  of  the  defeated  host.  It  is  surely  the  most 
dramatic  page,  yet  one  of  the  simplest  and  most  severely 
impartial  and  exact,  in  the  whole  range  of  historical 
literature. 

For  the  remainder  of  Greek  history  after  the  defeat  and 
decline  of  Athens  we  have  no  contemporary  authorities 
of  any  value,  except  the  Memoirs  of  Xenophon  ;  and  for 
the  marvellous  career  of  Alexander,  the  best  is  Arrian, 
who  at  least  had  access  to  the  works  of  eye-witnesses. 
And  thus  when  we  lose  the  light  of  Thucydides  and 
Xenophon,  we  must  trust  to  Plutarch  and  the  later  com- 
pilers, who  had  materials  that  are  lost  to  the  modern  world. 


94  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

Between  Thucydides  and  Xenophon  the  analogy  is  strange, 
and  the  contrast  even  more  strange.  Both  were  Athe- 
nians, saturated  with  Attic  culture,  both  exiles,  both  un- 
sparing critics  of  the  democracy  of  their  native  republic ; 
but  the  first  stood  resolute  in  his  proud  philosophic  neu- 
trality, whilst  cherishing  the  ideal  of  the  country  he  had 
lost ;  the  other  became  a  renegade  in  the  Greek  fashion, 
the  citizen  of  his  country's  natural  enemy,  and  alienated 
from  his  own  by  temperament,  in  sympathy,  and  in 
habits. 

When  these  Athenian  philosophers  fail  us,  we  had 
better  rely  on  Curtius  and  Grote.  Both  have  their  great 
and  special  merits.  And  if  the  twelve  volumes  of  Grote 
are  beyond  the  range  of  the  ordinary  reader  with  their 
mountains  of  detail  and  microscopic  exaggeration  of  minute 
incidents  and  insignificant  beings,  Curtius  in  less  than  a 
third  of  the  bulk  has  covered  nearly  the  same  ground  with 
a  more  philosophic  conception.  Strictly  speaking,  there 
is  not,  and  cannot  be,  a  history  of  Greece.  Greece  is 
scattered  broadcast  over  South-eastern  Europe  and  North- 
western Asia.  Greece  was  not  so  much  a  nation  as  a 
race,  a  movement,  a  language,  a  school  of  thought  and  art. 
And  thus  it  comes  that  any  history  of  Greece  is  utterly 
inadequate  without  such  books  as  Miiller's  .or  Mahaffy's 
Literature  of  Ancient  Greece,  Winckelmann's  History  of 
Ancient  Art,  Fustel  de  Coulanges'  Citt  Antique,  and 
Mahaffy's  Social  Life  in  Greece  and  Greek  Life  and 
Thought,  or  John  Addington  Symonds'  delightful  essays 
on  Greek  Poets  and  the  scenery  of  Greece. 

The  twelve  volumes  of  Grote's  History  of  Greece  are 
neither  manageable  nor  necessary  for  any  but  regular 
scholars  of  the  original  authorities.  But  there  are  sections 
of  his  work  of  peculiar  value  and  well  within  the  scope 
of  the  general  reader.  These  are  :  the  account  of  the 


SOME    GREAT    BOOKS    OF    HISTORY.  95 

Athenian  democracy  (vol.  iv.  ch.  31);  of  the  Athenian 
empire  (vol.  v.  ch.  45);  the  famous  chapters  on  Socrates 
and  the  Sophists  (vol.  viii.  ch.  67,  68),  and  the  account  of 
Alexander's  expedition  (vol.  xii.).  For  the  general  descrip- 
tion of  Greece,  Curtius  is  unrivalled,  and  in  many  things 
he  is  a  valuable  corrective  of  Grote's  pedantic  radicalism. 
But  it  is  a  serious  drawback  to  Curtius  as  a  historian  that 
with  his  purist  Hellenic  sympathies  he  treats  the  history 
of  Greece  as  closed  by  Philip  of  Macedon,  whereas  in  one 
sense  it  may  be  said  that  the  history  of  a  nation  then  only 
begins.  The  histories  of  Greece  too  often  end  with  the 
death  of  Demosthenes,  or  the  death  of  Alexander,  though 
Freeman  and  Mahaffy  have  shown  that  neither  the  intel- 
lect nor  the  energy  of  the  Greek  race  was  at  all  exhausted. 
The  German  work  of  Holm,  pronounced  by  Mahaffy  to 
be  amongst  the  very  best,  will  soon  be  open  to  the  English 
reader. 

The  historians  of  Rome,  with  two  exceptions,  are  too 
diffuse,  or  too  fragmentary :  such  mere  epitomes  or  such 
uncritical  compilations,  that  they  have  no  such  value  for 
the  general  reader  as  the  great  historians  of  Greece.  Yet 
there  are  few  more  memorable  pages  in  history  than 
are  some  of  the  best  bits  from  the  delightful  story-teller 
Livy.  We  cannot  trust  his  authority ;  he  has  no  pretence 
to  critical  judgment  or  the  philosophic  mind.  He  is  no 
painter  of  character  ;  nor  does  he  ever  hold  us  spellbound 
with  a  profound  thought,  or  a  monumental  phrase.  But  his 
splendid  vivacity  and  pictorial  colour,  the  epic  fulness  and 
continuity  of  his  vast  composition,  the  glowing  patriotism 
and  martial  enthusiasm  of  his  majestic  theme,  impress  the 
imagination  with  peculiar  force.  It  is  a  prose  ^Eneid  — 
the  epic  of  the  Roman  commonwealth  from  ^neas  to 
Augustus.  It  is  inspired  with  all  the  patriotic  fire  of 
Virgil  and  with  more  than  Horatian  delight  in  the  simple 


96  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

virtues  of  the  olden  time.  For  the  first  time  a  great 
writer  devoted  a  long  life  to  record  the  continuous  growth 
of  his  nation  over  a  period  of  eight  centuries,  in  order  to 
do  honour  to  his  country's  career  and  to  teach  lessons  of 
heroism  to  a  feebler  generation.  Had  we  the  whole  of 
this  stupendous  work,  we  should  perhaps  more  fully  respect 
the  originality  as  well  as  the  grandeur  of  this  truly  Roman 
conception. 

One  of  the  abiding  sorrows  of  literature  is  the  loss  of 
the  107  books,  out  of  the  142  which  composed  the  entire 
series.  They  were  complete  down  to  the  seventh  century  : 
now  we  have  to  be  content  with  the  'epitomes,'  or  general 
table  of  contents.  But  35  books,  a  little  short  of  one 
quarter  of  the  whole,  have  reached  us.  In  these  times  of 
special  research  and  critical  purism,  the  merits  of  Livy 
are  forgotten  in  the  mass  of  his  glaring  defects.  Uncriti- 
cal he  is,  uninquiring  even,  nay,  almost  ostentatiously 
indifferent  to  exact  fact  or  chronological  reality.  He 
seems  deliberately  to  choose  the  most  picturesque  form 
of  each  narrative  without  any  regard  to  its  truth  ;  nay,  he 
is  too  idle  to  consult  the  authentic  records  within  reach. 
But  we  are  carried  away  by  the  enthusiasm  and  stately 
eloquence  of  his  famous  Preface:  we  forgive  him  the 
mythical  account  of  the  foundation  of  Rome  for  the  beauty 
and  heroic  simplicity  of  the  primitive  legends,  and  the 
immortal  pictures  of  the  early  heroes,  kings,  chiefs,  and 
dictators.  Where  the  facts  of  history  are  impossible  to 
discover,  it  is  something  to  have  epic  tales  which  have 
moved  all  later  ages.  And  we  may  more  surely  trust  his 
narrative  of  the  Punic  wars,  which  is  one  of  the  most 
fascinating  episodes  in  the  roll  of  the  Muse  of  History. 

She  is  still  weeping  bitter  and  silent  tears  for  a  loss  even 
greater  from  the  side  of  scientific  record  of  the  past.  The 
Romanised  Greek,  Polybius,  a  thinker  and  patriot  worthy 


SOME    GREAT    BOOKS    OF    HISTORY.  97 

of  an  older  time,  the  wise  and  cultured  friend  of  the  second 
Scipio,  wrote  the  history  of  Rome  in  forty  books,  for  the 
seventy-four  years  of  her  history,  from  the  origin  of  the 
second  Punic  war  to  the  end  of  the  third  and  the  final 
overthrow  of  Carthage.  It  was  the  crisis  in  the  fortunes 
of  Rome,  one  of  the  most  crucial  turning-points  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  And  it  found  a  historian,  who  was 
statesman,  philosopher,  and  man  of  learning,  curiously  well 
placed  to  collect  trustworthy  materials,  and  peculiarly  en- 
dowed for  just  and  independent  judgment.  In  all  the 
qualities  of  a  historian  but  one,  no  other  Greek  but  Thucyd- 
ides  can  be  placed  beside  him.  But  five  of  his  forty  books 
remain  entire.  His  dry  and  prosaic  method  has  cost  him 
immortality  and  robbed  us  of  all  but  a  small  remnant  of  this 
most  precious  record.  Of  all  great  historians  he  is  the  one 
most  wanting  in  fire  and  in  grace.  If  we  would  contrast 
the  work  of  a  mighty  master  of  narrative  with  that  of  a 
scrupulous  annalist,  we  may  read  the  famous  scene  in  the 
Carthaginian  senate,  when  the  second  Punic  war  is  de- 
clared to  the  ambassadors  of  Rome,  as  it  is  told  by  Poly- 
bius,  and  then  turn  to  the  same  story  in  the  stirring  pages 
of  Livy. 

It  is  the  fashion  now  to  neglect  Plutarch  ;  to  our  fathers 
of  the  last  three  centuries  he  was  almost  the  mainstay  of 
historical  knowledge.  His  Greek  is  poor;  his  manner  gos- 
sipy ;  his  method  uncritical ;  and  his  credulity  unlimited. 
But  he  belongs  himself  to  the  ancient  world  that  he  de- 
scribes. He  is  an  ancient  describing  the  look  of  the  ancient 
heroes  to  us  moderns.  He  was  a  moralist,  not  a  historian, 
a  painter  of  characters  rather  than  a  narrator  of  events. 
But  with  all  this,  Plutarch's  forty-six  Parallel  Lives  have 
a  special  value  of  their  own.  We  must  look  on  them  as 
the  spontaneous  moralising  of  a  fine  old  polytheistic 
preacher,  recounting  with  enthusiasm  the  deeds  of  the 
G 


98  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

famous  chiefs  of  Greece  and  Rome ;  full  of  superstitious 
tales,  traditional  anecdotes,  loose  hearsay  —  by  no  means 
exact  and  critical  history.  The  classical  enthusiasm  of  the 
eighteenth  century  was  nursed  upon  Plutarch's  Lives.  In 
his  simple  pages  the  genius  of  the  ancient  world  stands  out 
in  living  reality.  One  who  knew  his  Plutarch  would  un- 
derstand the  genius  of  Greece  and  Rome  better  than  if  he 
knew  7.  hundred  German  monographs. 

It  is  one  of  the  cruel  bereavements  of  Humanity  that  of 
his  Lives  no  less  than  fourteen  are  lost ;  those  of  the  fore- 
most types  of  the  ancient  world.  We  have  lost  that  of 
Epaminondas,  the  noblest  of  the  Greeks,  and  of  Scipio,  the 
noblest  of  the  old  patrician  chiefs.  We  have  lost  the  life 
of  Julius,  and  of  all  the  earlier  emperors  ;  and,  perhaps 
worst  of  all,  we  have  lost  the  life  of  Trajan,  the  greatest  of 
the  emperors :  the  emperor  whom  Plutarch  knew  in  life, 
and  of  whose  majestic  life  and  empire  we  have  the  scantiest 
record  of  all.  It  is  a  melancholy  and  interesting  coinci- 
dence that  Trajan,  one  of  the  grandest  figures  of  the  an- 
cient world,  to  whom  Plutarch  dedicated  one  of  his  works, 
is  almost  unknown  to  us,  though  he  may  have  been  himself 
familiar  with  the  Parallel  Lives.  History  has  strangely 
neglected  to  record  the  acts  of  one  of  the  noblest  of  all 
rulers  and  the  events  of  one  of  the  most  typical  of  all  ages  — 
mainly,  it  would  seem,  because  his  genius  had  given  to  his 
age  such  peace,  well-being,  and  unbroken  security. 

Although  so  large  a  part  of  Roman  history  is  known  to 
us  only  through  Greek  writers,  Rome  produced  at  least 
one  historian  who  may  be  set  beside  Thucydides  himself. 
Tacitus  was  a  philosopher,  who,  if  inferior  to  Thucydides 
in  calm  judgment  and  insight  into  the  compound  forces  of 
an  entire  age,  was  even  greater  than  Thucydides  as  a  mas- 
ter of  expression  and  in  his  insight  into  the  complex  invo- 
lutions of  the  human  heart.  The  literature  of  history  has 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.  99 

nothing  to  compare  with  his  gallery  of  portraits,  with  his 
penetration  into  character,  his  tragic  bursts  of  indignation, 
his  judicial  sarcasms,  and  his  noble  elevation  of  soul.  As 
a  painter  of  character  in  a  few  memorable  words,  Thomas 
Carlyle  alone  amongst  historians  comes  near  him.  But 
Tacitus  is  vastly  superior  in  monumental  brevity,  in  reti- 
cence, in  simplicity,  and  in  dignity.  There  are  pages  of 
Tacitus,  where  we  must  go  to  Shakespeare  himself,  to 
Moliere,  Cervantes,  Swift,  or  one  of  the  great  masters  of 
character,  to  find  the  like  of  these  dramatic  strokes  and 
living  portraiture. 

Tacitus,  it  is  true,  presents  us  in  his  Histories  and  An- 
nals with  the  inner,  that  is,  the  Roman  side  of  the  empire 
alone.  And  we  must  correct  his  view  with  that  of  the 
provinces  —  Gaul,  Spain,  Britain,  as  seen  by  the  larger 
and  wider  world  of  the  West  which  was  absorbing  Rome 
in  ways  little  intelligible  to  the  proud  Roman  himself. 
And  Tacitus'  strange  parody  of  the  history  of  the  Jews 
may  serve  to  remind  us  how  apt  is  the  wisest  believer  in 
his  own  type  of  civilisation  to  be  blind  to  the  new  moral 
forces  which  are  gathering  up  to  destroy  it.  Of  Tacitus 
we  now  have  an  excellent  English  version  (Church  and 
Brodribb,  3  vols.,  1868-1877) ;  and  all  solid  readers  who 
care  for  great  historical  pictures  may  know  the  trenchant 
judgment  on  the  empire  under  Augustus  and  Tiberius,  the 
noble  portraits  of  Germanicus  and  of  Agricola,  and  above 
all  his  masterly  account  of  the  German  races,  our  sole  doc- 
umentary record  of  the  first  stages  in  the  civilisation  of  our 
Teutonic  ancestors. 

It  is  of  course  necessary  to  have  some  continuous  sum- 
mary of  the  history  of  Greece  and  Rome.  We  have 
already  spoken  of  the  general  manuals  of  Heeren  and  of 
Rawlinson.  For  Greece,  those  who  find  Bishop  Thirlwall's 
scholarly  and  sensible  work  too  long,  may  content  them- 


IOO  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

selves  with  the  summary  of  Dr.  Smith  or  Sir  W.  Cox.  For 
Rome  we  have  the  admirable  manual  of  Dean  Merivale 
(General  History  of  Rome,  1875)  which  condenses  the  his- 
tory of  1 200  years  in  600  pages.  For  the  career  of  Julius 
Caesar  and  the  foundation  of  the  dictatorship  which  be- 
came the  Roman  empire,  all  should  read  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth  chapters  of  Mommsen's  History  of  Rome,  in  the 
fourth  volume  of  the  English  translation. 

For  the  ancient  world  we  have  several  well-known  and 
familiar  works,  which  take  us  into  the  heart  of  its  politi- 
cal, military,  and  intellectual  life  :  —  Xenophon's  Memoir 
of  Socrates,  Arrian's  Persian  Expedition  of  Alexander,  com- 
piled in  imperial  times  from  original  sources,  Caesar's 
Commentaries,  and  Cicero's  Letters  to  his  Friends.  Xeno- 
phon,  the  fastidious  and  ambitious  soldier  who  forsook 
Athens  for  Sparta,  has  given  us  the  most  faithful  picture 
of  Socrates,  which  is  a  revelation  of  the  intellectual  aspect 
of  '  the  eye  of  Greece  '  in  the  great  age.  Arrian  com- 
piled from  the  memoirs  of  eye-witnesses  a  truthful  and 
complete  picture  of  one  of  the  most  wonderful  episodes  in 
the  history  of  mankind — the  conquest  of  the  East  by  the 
King  of  Macedon.  Caesar  was  almost  as  great  in  letters  as 
he  was  in  war.  His  account  of  the  Conquest  of  Gaul,  one 
of  the  great  pivots  of  general  history,  was  famous  from  its 
first  appearance  for  the  exquisite  purity  of  its  language,  its 
masterly  precision  of  truthfulness,  its  noble  simplicity  and 
heroic  brevity.  It  has  served  all  after  ages  as  the  first 
Latin  text-book,  and  describes  for  us  one  of  the  most  mem- 
orable episodes  in  history,  recounted  by  its  principal  actor, 
himself  the  greatest  name  in  the  history  of  mankind.  We 
need  not  be  admirers  of  Cicero  as  a  man,  nor  partial  to 
his  type  of  eloquence,  to  enjoy  the  graceful  gossip  of  his 
familiar  correspondence,  with  its  wonderful  picture  of  the 
modern  side  of  Roman  civilisation. 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.          IOI 

No  rational  understanding  of  history  is  possible  without 
attention  to  geography  and  a  distinct  hold  on  the  local 
scene  of  the  great  events.  Nor  again  can  we  to  any  ad- 
vantage follow  the  political,  without  a  knowledge  of  the 
aesthetic  and  practical  life  of  any  ancient  people.  For 
the  geography  we  need  Spruner  s  Atlas,  or  Freeman's  His- 
torical Geography,  Wordsworth's  or  Mahaffy's  Travels  in 
Greece,  the  first  chapter  of  Curtius'  History  of  Greece.  Dr. 
Smith's  Dictionaries  of  Antiquities  and  of  Biography,  A.  S. 
Murray's  History  of  Sculpture,  or  Lubke's  History  of  Art, 
Middleton's  Rome,  Dyer's  Pompeii,  and  our  museums  may 
serve  for  art. 

It  is  no  personal  paradox,  but  the  judgment  of  all  com- 
petent men,  that  the  Decline  and  Fall  of  Gibbon  is  the 
most  perfect  historical  composition  that  exists  in  any  lan- 
guage :  at  once  scrupulously  faithful  in  its  facts  ;  consum- 
mate in  its  literary  art ;  and  comprehensive  in  analysis  of 
the  forces  affecting  society  over  a  very  long  and  crowded 
epoch.  In  eight  moderate  volumes,  of  which  every  sen- 
tence is  compacted  of  learning  and  brimful  of  thought,  and 
yet  every  page  is  as  fascinating  as  romance,  this  great  his- 
torian has  condensed  the  history  of  the  civilised  world  over 
the  vast  period  of  fourteen  centuries  —  linking  the  ancient 
world  to  the  modern,  the  Eastern  world  to  the  Western, 
and  marshalling  in  one  magnificent  panorama  the  contrasts, 
the  relations,  and  the  analogies  of  all.  If  Gibbon  has  not 
the  monumental  simplicity  of  Thucydides,  or  the  profound 
insight  of  Tacitus,  he  has  performed  a  feat  which  neither 
has  attempted.  '  Survey  mankind,'  says  our  poet,  '  from 
China  to  Peru ! '  And  our  historian  surveys  mankind 
from  Britain  to  Tartary,  from  the  Sahara  to  Siberia,  and 
weaves  for  one-third  of  all  recorded  time  the  epic  of  the 
human  race. 

Half  the  hours  we  waste  over  desultory  memoirs  of  very 


IO2  THE    MEANING   OF    HISTORY. 

minor  personages  and  long-drawn  biographies  of  mere 
mutes  on  the  mighty  stage  of  our  world,  would  enable  us 
all  to  know  our  Decline  and  Fall,  the  most  masterly  survey 
of  an  immense  epoch  ever  elaborated  by  the  brain  of  man. 
There  is  an  old  saying  that  over  the  portal  of  Plato's 
Academy  it  was  written,  '  Let  no  one  enter  here,  till  he 
is  master  of  geometry.'  So  we  might  imagine  the  ideal 
School  of  History  to  have  graven  on  its  gates,  '  Let  none 
enter  here,  till  he  has  mastered  Gibbon.'  Those  who  find 
his  eight  crowded  volumes  beyond  their  compass  might  at 
least  know  his  famous  first  three  chapters,  the  survey  of 
the  Roman  empire  down  to  the  age  of  the  Antonines  ;  his 
seventeenth  chapter  on  Constantine  and  the  establishment 
of  Christianity  ;  the  reign  of  Theodosius  (ch.  32-34)  ;  the 
conversion  of  the  Barbarians  (ch.  37)  ;  the  kingdom  of 
Theodoric  (ch.  39);  the  reign  of  Justinian  (ch.  40,  41, 
42) ;  with  the  two  famous  chapters  on  Roman  Law  (ch. 
43,  44).  If  we  add  others,  we  may  take  the  career  of 
Charlemagne  (ch.  49);  of  Mahomet  (ch.  50,  51);  the 
Crusades  (ch.  58,  59,  which  are  not  equal  to  the  first-men- 
tioned) ;  the  rise  of  the  Turks  (ch.  64,  65)  ;  the  last  siege 
of  Constantinople  (ch.  68)  ;  and  the  last  chapters  on  the 
city  of  Rome  (69,  70,  71). 

Gibbon  takes  us  into  mediaeval  history,  but  he  is  by  no 
means  sufficient  as  a  guide  in  it.  The  mediaeval  period  is 
certainly  difficult  to  arrange.  In  the  first  place,  it  has 
a  double  aspect  —  Feudalism  and  Catholicism  —  the  or- 
ganisation of  the  Fief  and  Kingdom,  and  the  organisation 
of  the  Church.  In  the  next  place,  these  two  great  types 
of  social  organisation  are  extended  over  Europe  from  the 
Clyde  to  the  Morea  of  Greece,  embracing  thousands  of 
baronies,  duchies,  and  kingdoms,  each  with  a  common 
feudal  and  a  common  ecclesiastical  system,  but  with  dis- 
tinct local  unity  and  an  independent  national  and  pro- 


SOME    GREAT    BOOKS    OF    HISTORY.  IO3 

vincial  history.  The  facts  of  mediaeval  history  are  thus 
infinite  and  inextricably  entangled  with  each  other  ;  the 
details  are  often  obscure  and  usually  unimportant,  whilst 
the  common  character  is  striking  and  singularly  uniform. 

The  true  plan  is  to  go  to  the  fountain-head,  and,  at  what- 
ever trouble,  read  the  best  typical  book  of  the  age  at  first 
hand  —  if  not  in  the  original,  in  some  adequate  translation. 
I  select  a  few  of  the  most  important  : —  Eginhardt's  Life 
of  Charles  the  Great ;  The  Saxon  Chronicle  ;  Asser'sZz/<?  of 
Alfred,  which  is  at  least  drawn  from  contemporary  sources  ; 
William  of  Tyre's  and  Robert  the  Monk's  Chronicle  of  the 
Crusades  ;  Geoffiey  Vinsauf  ;  Joinville's  Life  of  St.  Louis  ; 
Suger's  Life  of  Louis  the  Fat ;  St.  Bernard's  Life  and  Ser- 
mons (see  J.  C.  Morison's  Life);  Froissart's  Chronicle; 
De  Commines'  Memoirs  ;  and  we  may  add  as  a  picture  of 
manners,  The  Paston  Letters. 

But  with  this  we  must  have  some  general  and  continu- 
ous history.  And  in  the  multiplicity  of  facts,  the  variety 
of  countries,  and  the  multitude  of  books,  the  only  possible 
course  for  the  general  reader  who  is  not  a  professed  stu- 
dent of  history  is  to  hold  on  to  the  books  which  give  us  a 
general  survey  on  a  large  scale.  Limiting  my  remarks,  as  I 
purposely  do,  to  the  familiar  books  in  the  English  language 
to  be  found  in  every  library,  I  keep  to  the  household  works 
that  are  always  at  hand.  It  is  only  these  which  give  us  a 
view  sufficiently  general  for  our  purpose.  The  recent  books 
are  sectional  and  special  :  full  of  research  into  particular 
epochs  and  separate  movements.  It  is  true  that  the  older 
books  have  been  to  no  small  extent  superseded,  or  at  least 
corrected  by  later  historical  researches.  They  no  longer 
exactly  represent  the  actual  state  of  historical  learning. 
They  need  not  a  little  to  supplement  them,  and  something 
to  correct  them.  Yet  their  place  has  not  been  by  any 
means  adequately  filled.  At  any  rate  they  are  real  and 


IO4  THE    MEANING   OF    HISTORY. 

permanent  literature.  They  fill  the  imagination  and  strike 
root  into  the  memory.  They  form  the  mind  ;  they  become 
indelibly  imprinted  on  our  conceptions.  They  live  :  whilst 
erudite  and  tedious  researches  too  often  confuse  and  dis- 
gust the  general  reader.  To  the  '  historian,' ,  perhaps,  it 
matters  as  little  in  what  form  a  book  is  written,  as  it  mat- 
ters in  what  leather  it  is  bound.  Not  so  to  the  general 
reader.  To  teach  him  at  all,  one  must  fill  his  mind  with 
impressive  ideas.  And  this  can  only  be  done  by  true  lit- 
erary art.  For  these  reasons  I  make  bold  to  claim  a  still 
active  attention  for  the  old  familiar  books  which  are  too 
often  treated  as  obsolete  to-day. 

There  are  four  books  on  mediaeval  history  from  which 
the  last  generation  learned  much ;  though  we  can  hardly 
count  any  of  them  amongst  the  great  books  of  history. 
Hallam's  Middle  Ages  is  now  seventy-five  years  old ; 
Guizot's  Lectures  on  Civilisation  in  Europe  is  sixty-five 
years  old ;  Michelet's  early  History  of  France  is  sixty 
years  old ;  and  Dean  Mil  man's  Latin  Christianity  is 
forty  years  old.  They  are  all  books  that  cannot  be 
neglected  ;  even  though  it  is  true  that  modern  research 
has  proved  them  to  have  not  a  few  shortcomings  and  some 
positive  errors.  Yet  withal,  I  know  no  books  in  familiar 
use,  from  which  the  general  English  reader  can  learn  so 
much  of  the  nature  of  the  Middle  Ages  as  in  these. 

Guizot's  Lectures  on  Civilisation,  in  spite  of  its  sixty- 
five  years,  in  spite  of  the  recent  additions  to  all  that  we 
know  of  the  origin  of  the  feudal  world,  of  mediaeval  law 
and  custom,  of  mediaeval  sovereignty,  still  remains  the 
most  valuable  short  conspectus  of  the  mediaeval  system 
which  the  general  reader  has.  His  essay  was  the  earliest 
attempt  to  explain  by  real  historical  research  the  great 
services  to  civilisation  of  the  feudal  monarchy  and  the 
Catholic  Church,  which  Chateaubriand,  Walter  Scott,  De 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.          IO5 

Maistre,  and  Manzoni  had  already  embodied  in  romantic 
episodes  or  in  trenchant  controversy.  It  is  of  prime 
importance  for  the  historian  to  be  conversant  with  the 
affairs  of  state,  or  at  least  to  pass  his  life  amidst  politicians 
and  practical  chiefs.  This  is  the  strength  of  Thucydides, 
Xenophon,  Polybius,  Caesar,  Livy,  Tacitus,  De  Commines, 
and  we  may  almost  add  Hume  and  Gibbon.  But  amongst 
modern  historians  there  is  no  more  conspicuous  example 
of  this  than  Guizot,  a  large  part  of  whose  life  was  passed 
in  office  and  in  the  Chamber.  He  writes  of  Charlemagne, 
St.  Louis,  and  Philip  the  Fair,  like  a  man  who  has  had 
charge  of  the  destinies  of  a  great  nation.  A  work  of  real 
historical  insight  may  be  supplemented  or  corrected  by 
later  research.  But  no  industry  in  the  examination  of 
documents  will  ever  make  a  useful  compilation  into  a  great 
book  of  history. 

Hallam's  Middle  Ages  first  appeared  in  1818,  and  with 
Guizot's  Lectures  on  Civilisation  in  Europe,  ten  years  later, 
created  an  epoch  in  historical  study.  But  Hallam  con- 
tinued to  labour  on  his  first  work  for  thirty  years  and 
more  of  his  long  life ;  and  the  complete  shape  of  the 
Middle  Ages  dates  from  1848.  Since  then  much  has  been 
added  to  our  knowledge,  especially  as  to  the  organisation 
of  feudal  relations,  both  in  town  and  country,  in  the 
history  of  the  English  constitution,  and  the  land-system 
at  home  and  abroad.  But  no  book  has  filled  the  whole 
space  occupied  by  Hallam  with  his  breadth  of  view  and 
patient  comparative  method.  At  present,  perhaps,  the 
most  valuable  portions  of  his  work  are  the  first  four 
chapters  on  France,  Italy,  and  Spain,  and  the  concluding 
chapter  on  the  state  of  society,  much  of  which,  it  is  true, 
may  now  be  corrected  by  later  research.  The  account 
of  Germany  is  much  better  read  in  Mr.  Bryce's  Holy 
Roman  Empire,  that  of  the  church  in  Dean  Milman,  and 


IO6  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

that  of  the  English  constitution  in  Bishop  Stubbs.  One 
of  the  main  wants  of  historical  literature  now  is  a  book 
on  the  Middle  Ages  which  should  cover  the  whole  of 
Europe,  in  its  intellectual,  its  spiritual,  and  its  political 
side,  with  all  the  knowledge  that  we  have  gained  from  the 
researches  of  the  last  fifty  years.  Unhappily,  it  seems  as 
if  history  were  condemned  to  the  rigid  limits  of  special 
periods,  as  if  the  philosophic  grasp  were  pronounced  to 
be  obsolete  by  indefatigable  research. 

Michelet's  History  of  France  down  to  Francis  I.,  although 
it  is  a  collection  of  brilliant  pensdes,  caract&res,  and  aperqus 
rather  than  a  continuous  history,  is  a  fine  and  stirring 
work  of  special  value  to  the  English  reader.  It  is  now 
sixty  years  old ;  but  a  century  will  not  destroy  its  living 
inspiration.  Hallam,  the  very  antithesis  of  Michelet,  one 
who  was  never  once  betrayed  into  an  epigram  or  fired  into 
poetry,  has  acknowledged  in  fit  language  the  beauty  and 
vigour  of  his  French  competitor.  There  are  magnificent 
chapters  on  the  eleventh,  twelfth,  thirteenth,  and  four- 
teenth centuries ;  and  his  picture  of  physical  France,  his 
story  of  Charles  the  Great,  of  Louis  the  Fat,  Philip 
Augustus,  St.  Louis,  Philip  the  Fair,  of  the  Crusades, 
the  Albigenses,  the  Communes,  his  chapters  on  Gothic 
architecture,  on  the  English  wars,  and  especially  on 
Jeanne  Dare,  are  unsurpassed  in  the  pages  of  modern 
historical  literature.  Michelet  has  some  of  the  moral 
passion  and  insight  into  character  of  Tacitus,  no  little  of 
the  picturesque  colour  of  Carlyle,  and  more  than  the  patri- 
otic glow  of  Livy.  Alas!  had  he  only  something  of  the 
patient  reserve  of  Thucydides,  the  simplicity  and  precision 
of  Caesar,  the  learning  and  harmonious  completeness  of 
Gibbon  !  He  is  a  poet,  a  moralist,  a  preacher,  rather  than 
a  historian  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  word.  Yet  with 
all  his  shortcomings  (and  his  later  work  has  but  flashes 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.          IO/ 

of  his  old  force),  Michelet's  picture  of  mediaeval  France 
will  long  remain  an  indispensable  book. 

Dean  Milman's  Latin  Christianity,  which  appeared  forty 
years  ago,  just  misses,  it  may  be,  being  one  of  'the  great 
books  of  history  '  — but  will  long  hold  its  own  as  an  almost 
necessary  complement  to  Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall.  It 
was  avowedly  designed  as  its  counterpart,  its  rival,  and 
in  one  sense  its  antidote.  And  we  cannot  deny  that  this 
aim  has  been,  to  a  great  extent,  attained.  It  covers  almost 
exactly  the  same  epoch;  it  tells  the  same  story;  its  chief 
characters  are  the  same  as  in  the  work  of  Gibbon.  But 
they  are  all  viewed  from  another  point  of  view  and  are 
judged  by  a  different  standard.  Although  the  period  is 
the  same,  the  personages  the  same,  and  even  the  incidents 
are  usually  common  to  both  histories,  the  subject  is  dif- 
ferent, and  the  plot  of  the  drama  is  abruptly  contrasted. 
Gibbon  recounts  the  dissolution  of  a  vast  system :  Milman 
recounts  the  development  of  another  vast  system  :  first 
the  victim,  then  the  rival,  and  ultimately  the  successor  of 
the  first.  Gibbon  tells  us  of  the  decline  and  fall  of  the 
Roman  empire :  Milman  narrates  the  rise  and  constitution 
of  the  Catholic  Church  —  the  religious  and  ecclesiastical, 
the  moral  and  intellectual  movements  which  sprang  into 
full  maturity  as  the  political  empire  of  Rome  passed  through 
its  long  transformation  of  a  thousand  years.  The  scheme 
and  ground-plan  of  Milman  are  almost  perfect.  Had  he 
the  prodigious  learning,  the  superhuman  accuracy  of.  Gib- 
bon, that  infallible  good  sense,  that  perennial  humour,  that 
sense  of  artistic  proportion,  the  Dean  might  have  rivalled 
the  portly  ex-captain  of  yeomanry,  the  erudite  recluse  in 
his  Swiss  retreat.  He  may  not  be  quite  strong  enough 
for  his  giant's  task.  But  no  one  else  has  even  essayed  to 
bend  the  bow  which  the  Ulysses  of  Lausanne  hung  up  on 
one  memorable  night  in  June  1787  in  his  garden  study; 


IO8  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

none  has  attempted  to  recount  the  marvellous  tale  of  the  con- 
solidation of  the  Christianity  of  Rome  over  the  whole  face  of 
Western  Europe  during  a  clear  period  of  a  thousand  years. 

The  whole  of  the  closely-packed  six  volumes  of  Latin 
Christianity  are  possibly  beyond  the  limits  of  many  general 
readers.  But  we  can  point  to  those  parts  which  may  be 
best  selected  from  the  rest.  The  Introduction  in  the  first 
book,  and  the  General  Survey  which  forms  the  fourteenth 
book  at  the  end  of  the  work,  are  the  parts  of  the  whole  of 
the  widest  general  grasp.  To  these  we  may  add  the  chap- 
ters which  treat  of  the  greater  Popes  :  Leo  the  Great  in 
Book  ii.,  Gregory  the  Great  in  Book  iii.,  Hildebrand  in 
Book  vii.,  Innocent  the  Third  in  Book  ix.,  Boniface  vin. 
in  Book  xi.  —  the  chapters  on  Theodoric,  Charlemagne, 
the  Othos,  the  Crusades,  St.  Bernard,  St.  Louis  —  those 
on  the  four  Latin  Fathers,  Ambrose,  Jerome,  Augustine, 
and  Gregory,  the  monastic  orders  of  St.  Benedict,  St. 
Dominic,  and  St.  Francis  —  the  Conversion  of  the  Bar- 
barians, and  the  Reformers  and  Councils  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  As  is  natural  and  fortunate,  the  Dean  is 
strongest  and  most  valuable  just  where  Gibbon  is  weakest 
or  even  misleading. 

In  his  Library,  Auguste  Comte  recommended  as  the 
complement  of  Gibbon,  the  Ecclesiastical  History  of 
the  Abbe  Fleury.  But  it  seems  in  vain  to  press  upon  the 
general  reader  of  English  a  work  in  French  so  bulky,  so 
unfamiliar,  and  so  far  removed  from  us  in  England  to-day 
both  in  date,  in  form,  and  in  tone.  It  was  published  in 
1690,  more  than  two  hundred  years  ago,  and  is  in  twenty 
volumes  quarto,  and  only  in  part  translated  into  English. 
It  contains  an  excellent  narrative,  which  was  warmly 
praised  by  Voltaire.  But  it  is  entirely  uncritical ;  it  is  of 
course  not  on  the  level  of  modern  scholarship  ;  and  as  the 
work  of  a  prelate  under  the  later  reign  of  Louis  xiv.,  it  is 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.          ICK) 

naturally  composed  from  the  theological  and  miraculous 
point  of  view.  The  Abbe  gives  us  the  view  of  the  Catholic 
world  as  seen  by  a  sensible  and  liberal  Catholic  divine  in 
the  seventeenth  century.  The  Dean  has  painted  it  as 
imagined  by  a  somewhat  sceptical  and  Protestant  man  of 
the  world  in  the  nineteenth. 

When  we  pass  from  Mediaeval  to  Modern  History,  we 
are  confronted  with  the  difficulty  that  modern  history  is 
infinitely  the  more  intricate  and  varied,  and  that,  as  we 
advance,  the  histories  become  continually  more  and  more 
devoted  to  special  epochs  and  countries,  and  are  minute 
researches  into  local  incidents  and  chosen  persons.  The 
immediate  matter  in  hand  in  this  essay  is  to  direct  atten- 
tion to  great  books  of  history,  meaning  thereby  those  works 
which  take  us  to  the  inner  life  of  one  of  the  great  typical 
movements,  or  which  in  manageable  form  survey  some  of 
the  great  epochs  of  general  history.  Such  surveys  for  the 
last  four  centuries  are  exceedingly  rare.  There  are  many 
valuable  standard  works,  which  are  supposed  to  be  in  every 
gentleman's  library,  and  which  are  familiar  enough  to  every 
historical  student.  But  they  form  a  list  that  can  hardly 
be  compressed  into  one  hundred  volumes,  and  to  master 
them  is  beyond  the  power  of  the  average  general  reader 
to  whom  these  pages  are  addressed.  We  can  mention 
some  of  them  :  though  they  are  hardly  'great  books,'  and 
neither  in  range  of  subject,  in  charm,  or  in  insight,  have 
they  the  stamp  of  Herodotus  or  Gibbon. 

I  am  accustomed  to  recommend  as  a  general  summary 
the  Outline  of  Modern  History  by  Jules  Michelet.  It  is 
unsurpassed  in  clearness  and  general  arrangement.  It 
begins  with  the  taking  of  Constantinople  by  the  Turks  in 
1453,  and  has  been  well  translated  and  continued  to  our 
own  day  by  Mrs.  W.  Simpson.  I  am  also  old-fashioned 
enough  to  rely  on  the  Manual  of  a  great  historian,— 


IIO  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

Heeren's  Political  System  of  Europe  which  covers  almost  ex- 
actly the  same  ground,  —  though  it  is  now  more  than  eighty 
years  old,  not  easily  procurable  in  the  English  form,  and 
avowedly  restricted  to  the  political  relations  of  the  Euro- 
pean States.  But  its  concise  and  masterly  grouping,  its 
good  sense  and  just  proportion,  make  it  the  model  of  a 
summary  of  a  long  and  intricate  period.  But  we  must  not 
ask  more  from  it  than  it  professes  to  give  us.  We  shall 
look  from  it  in  vain  for  any  account  of  the  revolution 
directed  by  Cromwell  or  of  the  culture  that  gave  splen- 
dour to  the  early  years  of  Louis  xiv. 

Summaries  and  manuals  are  of  course  made  for  stu- 
dents, and  it  would  be  vain  to  expect  the  general  reader, 
who  is  not  about  to  be  '  extended  '  on  the  '  mark-system,' 
and  who,  tired  with  work,  takes  up  a  volume  at  his  fire- 
side, to  commit  to  memory  the  dates  and  subdivisions 
which  are  the  triumph  of  the  examiner  and  the  despair  of 
the  practical  man.  Records  and  summaries  there  must 
be,  if  only  for  reference  and  general  clearness  of  heads. 
We  must  to  some  extent  group  our  periods ;  and,  without 
pretending  to  very  minute  details,  the  following  may  serve 
for  practical  purposes,  and  are  those  which  are  commonly 
adopted  :  — 

1.  The  formation   of  the  European  monarchies  and 

the  rise  of  the  modern  State-System. 

2.  The  revival  of  learning  and  the  intellectual  move- 

ment known  as  the  Renascence.     This    is    syn- 
chronous with,  and  related  to,  the  first  mentioned. 

3.  The  Reformation  and  the  great  religious  wars  down 

to  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

4.  The   dynastic,    territorial,   and   colonial    struggles 

from  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  to  the  close  of  the 
Seven  Years'  War. 


SOME    GREAT    BOOKS    OF    HISTORY.  1 1  I 

5.  The  struggle  against  autocracy  in  (a)  Holland  in 

the  sixteenth  century ;  (b)  England  in  the  sev- 
enteenth century ;  (c)  America  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  This  is  a  special  phase  of  the  general 
movements  noted  as  3  and  4. 

6.  The  Revolution  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  its 

political,  social,  and  industrial  effects. 

We  will  take  each  of  these  six  movements  in  their 
order  :  — 

I.  For  the  first  we  have  a  book  of  established  fame, 
now  well  entered  on  its  second  century,  which  still  lives 
by  virtue  of  its  high  powers  of  generalisation,  its  pellucid 
style,  and  sureness  of  judgment  —  Robertson's  Charles  V. 
In  spite  of  the  development  of  research  in  the  last  one 
hundred  and  thirty  years,  the  famous  Introduction  or  Sur- 
vey of  Europe  from  the  fall  of  the  Roman  empire  to  the 
fifteenth  century  remains  an  indispensable  book,  the  ap- 
pendix, as  it  were,  and  philosophic  completion  of  The 
Decline  and  Fall. 

The  volume  on  the  Middle  Ages  is  indeed  one  of  those 
permanent  and  synthetic  works  which  have  been  almost 
driven  out  of  modern  libraries  by  the  growth  of  special 
studies,  but  it  belongs  to  that  order  of  general  histories 
of  which  we  are  now  so  greatly  in  need.  For  the  consoli- 
dation" of  States  in  Italy  we  must  resort  to  Sismondi's 
Italian  Republics,  of  which  there  is  a  small  English  abridg- 
ment ;  for  that  of  France  to  Michelet ;  for  Spain  to  Pres- 
cott's  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  ;  and  for  England  to  Hallam's 
Constitutional  History  of  England ;  this,  though  fifty  years 
have  much  impaired  its  value,  still  holds  the  field  by  its 
judicial  balance  of  mind.  For  later  authorities  we  must 
turn  to  the  general  Histories  of  England  of  J.  R.  Green 
and  of  Dr.  F.  Bright.  But  .we  can  point  to  no  work  save 


112  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

that  of  Robertson  which  in  one  general  view  will  give  us 
the  history  of  Europe  in  the  sixteenth  century. 

II.  For  the  Renascence  of  Learning  and  Art,  we  have 
no  better  exponents  than  Burckhardt,  Michelet,  and  Sy- 
monds.     The  German  is  full  of  learning  and  sound  judg- 
ment ;  the  Frenchman  has  a  single  volume  of  wonderful 
brilliancy  and  passion  ;    the  Englishman  has  produced  a 
long  series  of   works  charged  with  learning   and   almost 
overloaded    with    ingenious   criticism    and    superabundant 
illustration.     But  the  Renascence  is  best  studied  in  the 
biographies  of  its  leaders,  Lorenzo  de'  Medici,  Columbus, 
Bruno,    Leonardo   da   Vinci,    Michael    Angelo,    Rabelais, 
Erasmus,  Ariosto,  and  Calderon — in  the  great  paintings, 
buildings,  inventions,  and  poems  —  in  such  books  as  those 
of  Cellini,  More,  Montaigne,  and  Cervantes.     A  movement 
so  subtle,  so  diffused,   so  complex  can  have  no  history. 
But  its  spirit  has  been  caught  and  embalmed  by  Michelet 
in  some  hundred  pages  of  almost  continuous  epigram  and 
poetry.     A  sort  of  catalogue  raisonne"e  presenting  its  versa- 
tile and  ingenious  force  may  be  best  collected  from  a  study 
of  Hallam's  great  work —  The  Literature  of  Europe  in  the 
fifteenth,  sixteenth,  and  seventeenth  centuries. 

III.  For  the  Reformation  we  rely  on  Ranke's  History 
of  the  Popes,  especially  for  Germany.     For  England  the 
history  has  been  adequately  told  both  by  Green  and  by 
Froude ;  for  Holland  by  Motley ;  for  France  by  Michelet. 
It  is  here  of  course  that  the  most  violent  partisanship 
comes  in  to  disturb  the  tranquil  judgment-seat  of  history. 
History   becomes    controversy  rather   than    record.     The 
Catholic  will  consult  the  splendid  polemical  invective  of 
Bossuet  —  The  Variations  of  Protestantism.     The  Protes- 
tant will    rely  on    the  vehement  impeachment    of    Merle 
D'Aubigne. 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.          113 

IV.  The   dynastic,    territorial,    and    colonial    struggles 
from  the  Peace  of  Westphalia  to  the  close  of  the  Seven 
Years'  War  have  been  well  summarised  by  Heeren  in  his 
Political  System,  by  Michelet  in  his  summary  of  Modern 
History,  and   by  Duruy  in    his  Histoire   des    Temps  Mo- 
dernes.     There  is  no   book  which  can    be   said   to    enter 
into  literature  and  gives  an  adequate  picture  of  this  period, 
unless  it  be  Voltaire's  Age  of  Louis  xiv.  and  Louis  xv. 
Lord  Stanhope's  Histories  of  Queen  Anne  and  of  England, 
Carlyle's    Frederick   the    Great,    H.    Martin's    Histoire   de 
France,  Lecky's  excellent  History  of  England  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century,  are    standard  works  for   this  period  ;    but 
they  are  all  far  too  voluminous,  too  special,  and  diffuse  for 
the  purposes  of  the  general  reader,  nor  do  they  enter  into 
the  scheme  of  the  present  essay. 

V.  Nor  again  is  it  possible  to  put  into  the  hands  of  the 
general  reader  of  English  any  single  work  which  will  give 
an  adequate    conception  of   the  successive  struggles  for 
freedom  in   Holland,  England,  and  America.     They  must 
be  read  in  the  separate  histories,  of  which  there  are  some 
that  are  excellent,  though  all  of  a  formidable  length  and 
bulk.     The  nine  volumes    which    Motley  devoted  in  his 
three  works  on  the  struggle  in  Holland,  the  three  works 
of  Guizot  on  the  English  Revolution  and  its  leaders,  the 
standard  work  of  Bancroft  on  the  United  States,  form  a 
series  beyond  the  resources  of  the  mere  general  reader  as 
distinct  from  the  student. 

There  are,  however,  three  works  which,  whilst  being  in 
form  and  in  bulk  within  the  compass  of  the  average  reader, 
give  adequate  portraits  of  the  three  noble  chiefs  of  the 
Dutch,  the  English,  and  the  American  revolutions.  Mot- 
ley's Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  Carlyle's  Letters  and 
Speeches  of  Cromwell,  and  Washington  Irving's  Life  of 
II 


I  14  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

Washington,  are  all  indispensable  books  to  one  who  desires 
to  know  the  work  of  three  of  the  great  heroes  of  the 
Protestant  republics.  And  these  three  are  peculiarly 
suited  for  the  biographical  method.  For  not  only  were 
they  each  the  undoubted  chiefs  of  great  historic  move- 
ments, but  they  were  all  three  men  of  singularly  pure  and 
magnanimous  life,  who  each  embodied  the  highest  type  of 
the  age  which  they  inspired. 

Carlyle's  Cromwell  has  definitely  formed  the  view  that 
Englishmen  take  of  their  own  history  and  even  their  view 
of  their  political  system.  It  is  one  of  the  most  splendid 
monuments  of  historical  genius,  for  it  reversed  the  false 
judgment  which,  for  two  centuries,  political  and  religious 
bigotry  had  passed  on  the  greatest  ruler  that  these  islands 
ever  knew,  and  formally  enthroned  him  on  the  love  and 
admiration  of  all  thinking  men.  It  is  needful  to  bear  in 
mind  that  this  great  work  is  not  a.  Life  of  Cromwell;  it 
was  not  so  designed;  it  is  not  so  in  result.  It  is  the 
materials  annotated  for  a  biography  of  Cromwell  which 
Carlyle  never  wrote,  and  which  is  yet  to  be  written.  And 
it  is  essential  to  have  alongside  of  this  masterpiece  of  in- 
dustry and  genius,  a  continuous  history  of  the  whole  period 
from  the  accession  of  Charles  i.  to  that  of  William  in. 
With  all  its  defects,  we  shall  find  that  told  in  the  two 
works  of  Guizot  —  TJie  History  of  tJie  English  Revolution 
and  the  Life  of  Cromwell  —  as  they  appear  in  two  volumes 
in  the  English  version.  From  the  enormous  detail  of  Mr. 
Gardiner's  works  on  the  period,  and  their  still  incomplete 
state,  the  general  reader  will  be  content  to  trust  to  the 
fine  narrative  as  we  read  it  in  Green's  Short  History.  If 
we  hesitate  to  add  to  his  Cromwell  Mr.  Carlyle's  FriedricJi 
the  Second,  it  is  on  account  of  its  preposterous  length,  its 
interminable  digressions,  its  trivial  personalities  and  tedious 
scandal ;  because,  with  all  its  amazing  literary  brilliancy, 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY.          115 

it  entirely  omits  to  give  us  any  conception  of  Frederick  as 
a  creative  civil  statesman, —  though  this  is  the  character 
in  which  after  ages  will  principally  honour  him. 

VI.  For  the  Revolution  of  1789  we  have  the  wonderful 
book  of  Carlyle,  perhaps  the  most  striking  extant  example 
of  the  poetical  method  applied  to  history.  It  is  an  endur- 
ing book  ;  and  it  has  now  passed  into  its  sixth  decade  and 
that  immortality  which,  by  copyright  law,  enables  the  pub- 
lic to  buy  it  for  a  shilling.  The  poetical  and  pictorial 
method  too  often  ends  in  caricature  and  gives  tempting 
occasions  for  telling  portraiture.  And  both  in  his  loves 
and  his  hates,  Carlyle  has  too  often  proved  to  be  extrava- 
gant or  unjust,  and  sometimes  flatly  mistaken  in  his  facts. 
With  all  its  shortcomings  it  is  a  great  book  :  which,  in 
literary  skill,  has  not  been  surpassed  by  any  prose  of  our 
century,  and  which,  as  historical  judgment,  has  deeply 
modified  the  social  and  political  ideas  of  our  age.  But  as 
for  the  Cromwell  we  need  a  complement,  if  not  a  corrective, 
so  we  need  it  far  more  for  the  French  Revolution.  We 
may  find  it  in  Von  Sybel's  or  in  Michelet's  French  Revo- 
lution, or,  better  still,  in  the  clear,  judicial,  and  just  sum- 
mary of  Mignet.  For  the  history  of  the  Great  War,  we 
may  turn  to  the  abridged  edition  of  Sir  Archibald  Alison's 
in  a  single  volume,  as  fairly  adequate  and  satisfactory. 
This  avoids  nearly  all  his  besetting  faults,  and  contains  a 
very  fair  share  of  his  undoubted  merits.  A  far  superior 
book,  which  takes  in  the  whole  period  from  1792  to  1848, 
is  the  History  of  Modern  Europe  by  the  late  A.  C.  Fyffe, 
too  early  lost  to  historical  literature. 

For  the  growth  of  our  social  and  industrial  life  in  the 
present  century — a  subject  of  cardinal  importance  which 
must  practically  determine  our  political  sympathies  —  it 
is  too  obvious  that  no  adequate  general  account  exists. 


Il6  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

Perhaps  in  the  whole  range  of  historical  literature  no  book 
is  more  urgently  needed  than  a  real  history  of  the  develop- 
ment of  industry  and  social  existence  in  Europe  in  the 
present  century.  The  movement  itself  is  European  rather 
than  national,  and  social  and  economic  rather  than  politi- 
cal. In  the  meantime  we  have  no  other  resource  except 
to  follow  up  this  complex  evolution  of  modern  society, 
both  locally  and  sectionally.  Of  the  various  extant  histories, 
the  most  important  is  Harriet  Martineau's  History  of  Eng- 
land from  the  Peace  of  1815  ;  perhaps  the  most  generally 
interesting  is  Charles  Knight  '$  Popular  History  of  England, 
the  later  portions  of  which  are  less  superficial  and  elementary 
than  the  earlier.  The  modern  English  histories  of  Spencer 
Walpole,  Justin  M'Carthy,  and  W.  N.  Molesworth  are  fair, 
honest,  and  pleasant  to  read. 

In  these  few  notes  on  great  books  of  history,  it  does  not 
lie  in  my  plan  to  say  much  about  national  or  special  his- 
tories. From  my  own  point  of  view  the  life  of  Humanity 
in  its  fulness  is  the  central  aim  of  sound  knowledge ;  and 
that  which  substitutes  the  national  for  the  human  interest, 
that  which  withdraws  the  attention  from  organic  civilisa- 
tion to  special  incidents,  has  been  long  too  closely  followed. 
There  is  always  a  tendency  to  concentrate  the  interest  on 
national  history ;  and  it  needs  no  further  stimulus.  Nor 
are  the  details  of  our  national  history  ever  likely  to  pall  on 
the  intelligent  reader.  But  histories  on  such  a  scale,  that 
each  octavo  volume  records  but  a  year  or  two,  and  takes 
nearly  as  long  to  compose :  on  such  a  canvas,  that  every 
person  who  crosses  the  stage  and  each  incident  that  occurs 
within  the  focus  of  the  instrument,  is  recorded,  not  in  the 
degree  of  its  importance,  but  in  the  degree  of  the  bulk 
that  the  accessible  materials  may  fill  —  whatever  may  be 
their  value,  are  beyond  the  purport  of  this  chapter. 

The  only  aim  of  the  present  piece  is  to  suggest  to  a 


SOME  GREAT  BOOKS  OF  HISTORY. 

busy  man  a  few  books  in  which  he  may  catch  some  con- 
ception of  the  central  lines  of  human  evolution.  A  true 
philosophy  of  human  progress  (if  we  could  find  it)  would 
be  a  practical  manual  of  life  and  conduct  :  and  of  such  a 
philosophy,  history  in  the  larger  sense  must  be  the  bible 
and  basis.  Mark,  learn,  and  inwardly  digest  it,  not  as 
historical  romance  to  pass  a  few  idle  hours,  but  as  the 
revelation  of  the  slow  and  interrupted,  but  unceasing 
development  of  the  organism  of  which  we  are  cells  and 
germs.  What  we  need  to  know  are  the  leading  lines  of 
this  mighty  biography,  the  moral  and  social  links  that  bind 
us  to  the  series  of  our  ancestors  in  the  Past.  The  great 
truth  which  marks  the  science  of  our  time  is  the  sense  of 
unity  in  the  course  of  civilisation,  and  of  organic  evolution 
in  its  gradual  growth.  To  gain  a  conception  of  this  course 
we  must  set  ourselves  in  a  manly  way  to  study,  not  the 
picture  books  of  history,  but  the  classical  works  as  they 
came  from  the  master  hands  of  the  great  historians. 
Wherever  it  is  possible  we  must  go  to  the  original  sources, 
being  sure  that  no  story  is  ever  so  faithful  as  that  told  by 
those  who  themselves  saw  the  great  deed  and  heard  the 
voices  of  the  great  men. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE    HISTORY    SCHOOLS. 
An  Oxford  Dialogue  1 

ON  one  of  those  bright  misty  days  at  Oxford,  when  the 
grey  towers  are  dimly  seen  rising  from  masses  of  amber 
and  russet  foliage,  when  reading  men  enjoy  a  brisk  walk 
in  the  keen  afternoon  air,  to  talk  over  the  feats  of  the 
Long  and  the  chances  of  the  coming  Schools,  a  tutor  and 
a  freshman  were  striding  round  the  meadows  of  Christ 
Church.  The  Reverend  yEthelbald  Wessex,  called  by 
undergraduates  '  the  Venerable  Bede,'  was  taking  a  tutorial 
grind  with  his  young  friend,  Philibert  Raleigh,  who  had 
come  up  from  Eton  with  a  brilliant  record.  The  Admirable 
Crichton,  as  Phil  was  named  by  his  admirers,  was  expected 
to  do  great  things  in  the  History  School :  his  essay  had 
won  him  the  scholarship,  and  even  the  Master  admitted 
that  he  had  read  some  which  were  worse.  Phil  was  en- 
larging on  the  lectures  of  the  new  Regius  Professor. 

'  We  are  in  luck,'  said  he,  '  to  be  reading  for  the  Schools 
at  a  time  when  the  Professor  is  one  of  the  first  of  living 
writers  ;  his  lectures  are  a  lesson  in  English  literature, 
instead  of  a  medley  of  learned  "  tips." 

'  I  hope  my  dear  boy,'  said  the  Venerable,  '  that  you  are 
not  referring  to  the  late  Professor  in  that  rather  superficial 
remark  of  yours,  for  he  was  certainly  one  of  the  most  con- 
summate historians  of  modern  times.' 

1  Fortnightly  Review,  vol.  54,  N.s.      October  1893. 
118 


THE    HISTORY    SCHOOLS.  119 

'  Oh,  no,'  said  Phil,  in  an  apologetic  tone  ;  '  I  never 
heard  Dr.  Freeman  lecture  at  all,  and  I  have  not  yet  fin- 
ished the  third  volume  of  The  Norman  Conquest.  But 
surely  he  is  hardly  in  it  as  a  writer  with  Froude,  whose 
history  one  enjoys  to  read  as  one  enjoys  Quentin  Ditrward 
or  Ivanhoe  ? ' 

'  You  are  giving  yourself  away,  dear  boy,'  replied  the 
tutor,  with  his  shrewd  smile,  '  when  you  class  the  History 
of  England  with  a  novel.  Mr.  Froude's  enemies  (and  I 
am  certainly  not  one  of  them)  have  never  said  worse  of 
him  than  that.  I  am  afraid  that  the  first  thing  which 
Oxford  will  have  to  teach  you  is  that  the  business  of  a 
historian  is  to  write  history,  not  romance.' 

'  Of  course,'  said  the  freshman,  a  little  put  out  by  the 
snub,  '  I  should  not  compare  the  History  of  England  to 
romance,  nor,  I  suppose,  do  you.  But  we  know  that  all 
the  histories  in  the  world  which  have  permanent  life  are 
composed  with  literary  genius,  and  are  delightful  to  read 
in  themselves.  A  great  historian  has  to  write  history,  but 
he  also  has  to  write  a  great  book.' 

'  Literature  is  one  thing,'  said  the  Venerable,  in  some- 
what oracular  tones,  '  and  history  is  another  thing.  The 
TeXo<?  of  history  is  Truth.  She  may  be  more  attractive  to 
some  minds  when  clothed  in  shining  robes ;  but  the  his- 
torian has  to  worship  at  the  shrine  of  nuda  Veritas,  and  it 
is  no  business  of  his  to  care  for  the  drapery  she  wears. 
What  I  mean  is,  that  history  implies  indefatigable  research 
into  recorded  facts.  That  is  the  essence  :  the  form  is 
mere  accident.' 

'  The  form  of  the  sentences  may  be  a  secondary  thing,' 

pleaded  the    Crichton,    'but,    surely,    the   vivid  power  of 

striking  home  which  marks  every  great  book  is  essential  to 

a  history  intended  to  survive.     Would  the   Master   have 

•  given  all  that  labour  to  Thucydides  if  the  whole  of   his 


I2O  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

work  had  been  occupied  with  monotonous  accounts  of  how 
the  Spartans  marched  into  Attica,  and  how  the  Athenians 
sent  seven  ships  to  the  coast  of  Thrace  ?  Thucydides  is  a 
Krr)fj,a  et?  aei  because  of  the  elaborate  speeches,  the  account 
of  the  plague,  the  civil  war  in  Corcyra,  the  siege  of  Syra- 
cuse, and  the  last  sea-fight  in  the  harbour.  These  are  the 
things  which  make  Thucydides  immortal,  and  remind  one 
of  the  messenger's  speech  in  the  Persce.  It  is  these  mag- 
nificent pictures  of  the  ancient  world  which  help  us  to  get 
over  the  wearisome  parade  of  hoplites  and  sling-men,  and 
battles  of  frogs  and  mice  in  obscure  bays.' 

'  This  will  never  do,'  replied  the  tutor.  'We  shall  quite 
despair  of  your  class,  if  you  begin  by  calling  "  wearisome  " 
any  fact  ascertainable  in  recorded  documents.  The  busi- 
ness of  the  historian  is  to  examine  the  evidence  for  what 
has  ever  happened  in  any  place  or  time  ;  and  nothing 
which  is  true  can  be  wearisome  to  the  really  historical 
mind.' 

'  Arid  are  we  expected  to  enjoy  our  Codex  Diplomaticus 
as  much  as  our  Macaulay  and  our  Froude  ? ' 

'We  do  not  ask  you  to  enjoy,'  said  the  Bede,  in  his  dry 
way,  '  we  only  ask  you  to  know  —  or,  to  be  quite  accurate, 
to  satisfy  the  examiners.  The  brilliant  apologist  of  Henry 
vin.  seems  to  give  you  delightful  lectures  ;  but  I  can 
assure  you  that  the  Schools  know  no  other  standard  but 
that  of  accurate  research,  in  the  manner  so  solidly  estab- 
lished by  the  late  Regius  Professor  whom  we  have  lost.' 

'  Do  you  think  that  a  thoughtful  essay  on  the  typical 
movements  in  one's  period  would  not  pay  ? '  asked  the 
Admirable  one,  in  a  rather  anxious  tone. 

'My  young  friend,'  said  the  Reverend  Ethelbald,  'you 
will  find  that  dates,  authorities,  texts,  facts,  and  plenty  of 
diphthongs  pay  much  better.  You  are  in  danger  of  mor- 
tal heresy,  if  you  think  that  anything  will  show  you  a  royal 


THE    HISTORY   SCHOOLS.  121 

road  to  these.  If  there  is  one  thing  which,  more  than  an- 
other, is  the  mark  of  Oxford  to-day,  it  is  belief  in  contem- 
porary documents,  exact  testing  of  authorities,  scrupulous 
verification  of  citations,  minute  attention  to  chronology, 
geography,  palaeography,  and  inscriptions.  When  all  these 
are  right,  you  cannot  go  wrong.  For  all  this  we  owe  our 
gratitude  to  the  great  historian  we  have  lost.' 

'  Oh,  yes,'  said  Phil  airily,  for  he  was  quite  aware  that  he 
was  thought  to  be  shaky  in  his  pre-Ecgberht  chronicles ; 
'  I  am  not  saying  a  word  against  accuracy.  But  all  facts 
are  not  equally  important,  nor  are  all  old  documents  of  the 
same  use.  I  have  been  grinding  all  this  term  at  the  His- 
tory of  the  Norman  Conquest,  verifying  all  the  citations  as 
I  go  along,  and  making  maps  of  every  place  that  is  named. 
I  have  only  got  to  the  third  volume,  you  know,  and  I  don't 
know  now  what  it  all  comes  to.  Freeman's  West-Saxon 
scuffles  on  the  downs  seem  to  me  duller  than  Thucydides' 
fifty  hoplites  and  three  hundred  sling-men,  and  I  have  not 
yet  come  to  anything  to  compare  with  the  Syracusan  expe- 
dition.' 

'  This  is  a  bad  beginning  for  a  history  man,'  said  Baeda. 
'  Is  this  how  they  talked  at  Eton  of  the  greatest  period  of 
the  greatest  race  in  the  annals  of  the  world  ?  All  history 
centres  round  the  early  records  of  the  English  in  the  three 
or  four  centuries  before  the  first  coming  of  the  Jutes,  and 
the  three  or  four  after  it.  Let  me  advise  you  to  take  as 
your  period,  say,  the  battle  of  Ellandun,  and  get  up  all 
about  it,  and  how  "  its  stream  was  choked  with  slain,"  and 
what  led  up  to  it  and  what  came  after  it.  Do  you  know 
anything  more  interesting,  as  you  call  it,  than  that  ? ' 

'  Yes,'  said  Phil  readily,  with  all  the  recklessness  of  a 
smart  freshman  ;  '  why,  Ellandun  was  merely  the  slogging 
of  savages,  of  whom  we  know  nothing  but  a  few  names. 
What  I  call  fine  history  is  Macaulay's  famous  account  of 


122  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

the  state  of  England  under  the  Stuarts,  or  Froude's  splen- 
did picture  of  the  trial  and  execution  of  Mary  of  Scots. 
That  is  a  piece  of  writing  that  no  one  can  ever  forget.' 

'Ah,  just  so  !'  said  the  Venerable,  in  that  awful  mono- 
syllabic way  which  he  had  caught  from  the  Master  ;  '  splen- 
did picture  !  —  piece  of  writing  !  —  fine  history  !  —  here  we 
generally  take  "fine  history"  to  be  —  ah  !  false  history.' 

'  But  fine  history  need  not  be  false,'  said  Phil. 

'We  usually  find  it  so,'  replied  his  tutor,  'and  it  is  ten 
times  worse  than  false  quantities  in  a  copy  of  longs  and 
shorts.  There  is  no  worse  offence  outside  the  statute  book 
(and  many  offences  in  it  are  less  immoral)  than  the  crime 
of  making  up  a  picture  of  actual  events  for  the  sake  of  lit- 
erary effect,  with  no  real  care  for  exact  truthfulness  of  de- 
tail. A  historical  romance,  as  they  call  novels  of  past  ages, 
is  often  a  source  of  troublesome  errors ;  but,  at  any  rate, 
in  a  novel  we  know  what  to  expect.  It  is  a  pity  that  Scott 
should  talk  nonsense  about  Robin  Hood  in  IvanJioe,  and 
that  Bulwer  introduced  Caxton  into  the  Last  of  tJie  Barons. 
But  no  one  expects  to  find  truth  in  such  books,  and  every 
one  reads  them  at  his  own  peril.  In  a  history  of  England 
it  is  monstrous  to  be  careless  about  references,  and  to  trust 
to  a  late  authority.' 

'But  no  decent  historian  ever  does  intend  to  state  what 
he  knows  to  be  an  error,'  said  Phil,  somewhat  surprised  at 
the  warmth  of  the  West  Saxon's  indignation. 

'  I  should  think  not  indeed,'  said  Wessex ;  'no  one  but 
a  thief  intends  to  take  what  is  not  his  own,  and  no  one  but 
a  liar  means  to  state  what  he  knows  to  be  untrue.  But 
the  historian  of  all  men  is  bound  by  the  sanctities  of  his 
office  to  what  we  call  in  Roman  law  summa  diligentia. 
And  to  be  thinking  of  his  "  pictures,"  of  the  scheme  of  his 
colours  and  other  literary  effects,  forms  a  most  dangerous 
temptation  to  adopt  the  picturesque  form  of  a  story  in 


THE    HISTORY    SCHOOLS.  123 

place  of  the  recorded  truth.  Unfortunately,  as  we  know 
to  our  sorrow,  the  materials  of  the  historian  are  of  almost 
every  sort  —  good,  doubtful,  and  worthless  ;  the  so-called 
histories  go  on  copying  one  another,  adding  something  to 
heighten  the  lights  out  of  quite  second-rate  authority  ;  a 
wrong  reference,  a  false  date,  a  hearsay  anecdote  gets  into 
accepted  histories,  and  it  costs  years  of  labour  to  get  the 
truth  at  last.  If  you  ever  hope  to  be  a  historian,  you  must 
treat  historical  falsehood  as  you  would  a  mad  dog,  and 
never  admit  a  phrase  or  a  name  which  suggests  an  un- 
truth.' 

'  Has  not  this  purism  been  a  little  overdone  ? '  said  the 
innocent  freshman.  '  I  remember  that  Freeman  once  told 
us  he  could  not  bear  to  speak  of  the  Battle  of  Hastings, 
lest  some  one  should  imagine  that  it  began  on  the  sea- 
shore.' 

'A  fine  example  of  scrupulous  love  of  truth,'  replied 
the  Bede,  'and  I  wish  that  all  histories  of  England  had 
been  written  in  a  similar  spirit.  Can  anything  be  more 
unscholarly  than  a  readiness  to  accept  a  statement  which 
we  have  not  probed  to  the  core,  simply  because  it  works 
up  into  a  telling  picture,  or  will  point  an  effective  para- 
graph ?  It  is  positively  dishonest !  And  some  of  them 
will  quote  you  a  passage  which  you  discover,  on  collating 
it  with  the  original,  has  a  blunder  in  every  sentence,  and  a 
mistranslation  in  every  page.  If  you  write  a  romance,  you 
may  go  to  your  imagination  for  your  facts.  If  you  write 
history,  you  should  scrupulously  extract  the  best  contem- 
porary record,  and  throw  everything  else  into  the  fire.  I 
sometimes  wish  that  histories  were  not  published  at  all  in 
the  current  English  of  literature,  but  were  plain  and  dis- 
connected propositions  of  fact,  like  the  cuneiform  inscrip- 
tions of  Daryavush  at  Behistun.' 

'Surely,'   cried    Phil,   with   a  laugh,    'that  would    be  a 


124  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

little  dull !  It  would  be  a  mere  lexicon.  No  one  could 
get  up  Facciolati  or  Littre"  as  we  get  up  Herodotus.  Be- 
sides, the  enormous  number  of  propositions,  each  of  which 
might  fairly  be  called  "  truth,"  would  make  history  impos- 
sible even  for  the  most  prodigious  memory.' 

'  You  forget,'  said  the  tutor,  '  that  we  treat  history  in 
"  periods  "  of  short  or,  at  any  rate,  of  manageable  length. 
Nobody  has  any  business  out  of  his  own  "period,"  and  if  he 
trespasses  on  to  another  man's  "period,"  he  is  pretty  cer- 
tain to  be  caught.  The  "  periods  "  in  our  schools  are  far, 
far  too  long,  and  encourage  superficial  and  flashy  habits  of 
reading.  I  remember  dear  old  Bodley,  late  Professor  of 
Palaeography,  who  was  before  your  time,  saying  that  ten 
years  in  the  fourteenth  century  was  about  as  much  as  any 
man  should  try  to  master.  He  died,  poor  old  boy,  before  his 
great  book  was  ever  got  into  shape  at  all ;  and  perhaps  ten 
years  is  rather  short  for  a  distinct  period.  But  it  takes  a 
good  man  to  know  as  much  as  a  century,  as  it  ought  to  be 
known.  And  one  of  our  greatest  living  masters  in  history, 
with  enormous  industry  and  perseverance,  just  manages  to 
write  the  events  of  one  year  in  the  seventeenth  century 
within  each  twelve-months  of  his  own  laborious  life.' 

Phil  could  stand  this  no  longer.  With  a  whoop  and  a 
bound  (he  had  just  won  the  long  jump  in  his  college  sports) 
he  cleared  the  broad  ditch,  and  alighted  clean  in  the 
meadow  round  which  they  were  tramping. 

'Why,'  he  cried,  as  a  second  bound  brought  him  back 
again  to  the  side  of  his  Venerable  friend,  '  at  that  rate  we 
should  want  at  least  a  hundred  works,  I  suppose  in  ten 
volumes  each,  or  a  thousand  volumes  in  all,  cram  full  of 
gritty  facts  of  no  good  to  any  one.  All  this  week  I  have 
been  entering  in  my  note-book  such  bits  as  this  :  —  "  Ecg- 
frith  marched  to  a  place  called  the  Hoar  Apple-Tree.  It 
is  not  known  where  this  is,  or  why  he  went  there.  He  left 


THE    HISTORY    SCHOOLS.  12$ 

it  the  next  day,  and  neither  he  nor  it  are  ever  mentioned 
again  in  the  chronicles."  What  is  the  good  to  me  of  know- 
ing that  ? '  he  asked,  as  if  a  cheeky  freshman  was  likely 
to  put  the  Reverend  ^Ethelbald  into  a  tight  place. 

'  Bad,  bad  ! '  said  the  tutor,  who  began  to  fear  that  he 
was  wasting  his  time  on  Phil,  '  you  will  never  be  a  credit 
to  your  college  if  you  can  make  game  of  "truth"  like 
that  !  One  would  think  a  young  man  who  hoped  to  do 
something  would  care  to  know  a  few  true  facts  about  his 
English  forbears  a  thousand  years  ago.  But  the  question 
is  not  what  you  care  to  know,  but  what  you  ought  to 
know ;  and  every  Englishman  ought  to  know  every  word 
in  the  Saxon  Chronicle,  to  say  nothing  of  the  rest.  Nor  is 
it  a  question  at  all  about  your  thousand  volumes  of  history, 
the  bulk  of  which  deal  with  "periods"  that  do  not  con- 
cern you  at  all.  Your  thousand  volumes,  too,  is  a  very 
poor  estimate  after  all.  You  would  find  that  not  ten 
thousand  volumes,  perhaps  not  a  hundred  thousand  vol- 
umes, would  contain  all  the  truths  which  have  ever  been 
recorded  in  contemporary  documents,  together  with  the 
elucidations,  comments,  and  various  amplifications  which 
each  separate  truth  would  properly  demand.' 

'  But  at  this  rate,'  said  the  freshman  gloomily,  '  I  shall 
never  get  beyond  Ecgfrith  and  the  other  break-jaw  Old- 
English  sloggers.  When  we  come  up  to  Oxford  we  never 
seem  to  get  out  of  an  infinite  welter  of  "origins"  and 
primitive  forms  of  everything.  I  used  to  think  the  Cru- 
sades, the  Renascence,  Puritanism,  and  the  French  Revo- 
lution were  interesting  epochs  or  movements.  But  here 
lectures  seem  to  go  round  and  round  the  Mark-system,  or 
the  aboriginal  customs  of  the  Jutes.  We  are  told  that  it 
is  mere  literary  trifling  to  take  any  interest  in  Richelieu 
and  William  of  Orange,  Frederick  of  Prussia,  or  Mirabeau 
and  Danton.  The  history  of  these  men  has  been  acle- 


126  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

quately  treated  in  very  brilliant  books  which  a  serious 
student  must  avoid.  He  must  stick  to  Saxon  charters 
and  the  Doomsday  Survey.' 

'Of  course,  he  must,'  said  the  tutor,  'if  that  is  his 
" period"  —  and  a  very  good  period  it  is.  If  you  know 
how  many  houses  were  inhabited  at  Dorchester  and  Brid- 
port  at  the  time  of  the  Survey,  and  how  many  there  had 
been  in  the  Old-English  time,  you  know  something  definite. 
But  you  may  write  pages  of  stuff  about  what  smatterers 
call  the  "  philosophy  of  history,"  without  a  single  sentence 
of  solid  knowledge.  When  every  inscription  and  every 
manuscript  remaining  has  been  copied  and  accurately 
unravelled,  then  we  may  talk  about  the  philosophy  of 
history.' 

'  But  surely,1  said  Crichtonius  mirabilis,  '  you  don't  wish 
me  to  believe  that  there  is  no  intelligible  evolution  in 
the  ages,  and  that  every  statement  to  be  found  in  a 
chronicle  is  as  much  worth  remembering  as  any  other 
statement  ? ' 

'  You  have  got  to  remember  them  all,'  replied  the  Rev- 
erend yEthelbald  dogmatically,  '  at  any  rate,  all  in  your 
''period."  You  may  chatter  about  "evolution"  as  fast 
as  you  like,  if  you  take  up  Physical  Science  and  go  to  that 
beastly  museum  ;  but  if  you  mention  "evolution"  in  the 
History  School,  you  will  be  gulfed  —  take  my  word  for  it  ! 
I  daresay  that  all  statements  of  fact  —  true  statements  I 
mean  —  may  not  be  of  equal  importance  ;  but  it  is  far  too 
early  yet  to  attempt  to  class  them  in  order  of  value.  Many 
generations  of  scholars  will  have  to  succeed  each  other, 
and  many  libraries  will  have  to  be  filled,  before  even  our 
bare  materials  will  be  complete  and  ready  for  any  sort  of 
comparative  estimate.  All  that  you  have  to  do,  dear  boy, 
is  to  choose  your  period  (I  hope  it  will  be  Old-English 
somewhere),  mark  out  your  "claim,"  as  Californian  miners 


THE    HISTORY    SCHOOLS.  I2/ 

do,  and  then  wash  your  lumps,  sift,  crush  quartz,  till  you  find 
ore,  and  don't  cry  "  Gold  !  "  till  you  have  had  it  tested.' 

This  was  a  hard  saying  to  his  Admirable  young  friend, 
who  felt  like  the  rich  young  man  in  the  Gospel  when  he 
was  told  to  sell  all  that  he  had  and  to  follow  the  Master. 
'  I  have  no  taste  for  quartz-crushing,'  said  he  gloomily ; 
'what  I  care  for  are  Jules  Michelet  on  the  Middle  Ages, 
Macaulay's  pictures  of  Charles  n.  and  his  court  — (wonder- 
ful scene  that,  the  night  of  Charles's  seizure  at  Whitehall !) 
—  Carlyle  on  Mirabeau  and  Danton,  and  Froude's  Refor- 
mation and  Armada.  These  are  the  books  which  stir  my 
blood.  Am  I  to  put  all  these  on  the  shelf  ? ' 

'  Certainly !  put  them  away  this  very  day  till  you  have 
got  your  class  and  have  gone  on  a  yachting  holiday  :  when 
you  may  put  them  in  your  cabin  with  Scott  and  Dumas,' 
said  the  Venerable,  in  his  archiepiscopal  manner.  '  Let 
me  advise  you  not  to  waste  your  precious  hours  with 
novels.  Michelet,  with  his  stale  Victor-Hugo  epigrams 
and  his  absurd  references  to  the  BibliotJitque  Nationale  — 
Cabinet  de  Versailles — portrait  du  Louvre  —  as  if  that 
was  serious  history.  You  might  as  well  put  the  Trots 
Mousquetaires  in  your  list  of  books  in  the  History  School. 
Macaulay  is  all  very  well  and  a  real  reader,  of  course  ;  but 
he  had  always  one  eye  on  his  sentences,  and  he  would 
almost  misquote  a  manuscript  for  the  sake  of  a  smart 
antithesis.  There  is  far  too  much  about  French  harlots  ; 
but  the  worst  vice  of  his  book  is,  that  it  is  amusing,  which 
is  the  only  real  fault  in  Gibbon.  Carlyle  is  good  on 
Cromwell,  though  he  is  dreadfully  prejudiced ;  he  had 
never  seen  the  Clark  Papers  and  consequently  he  has  to 
be  put  right  on  a  hundred  points.  And  as  to  his  French 
Revolution,  it  reads  to  me  like  an  extract  from  Rabelais  ; 
and  what  on  earth  can  you  have  to  do  with  the  Encyclo- 
paedists, Girondins,  Mountain,  and  Sans-culottes  ?' 


128  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

'Why,  Oscar  at  Eton  used  to  tell  us,  that  no  part  of 
history  was  more  essential  than  all  that  led  up  to  the 
Revolution  of  1789,  and  all  that  has  led  down  from  it  to 
our  present  day,  and  John  Morley  says  the  same,'  replied 
the  unhappy  fresher. 

'  Oscar's  a  radical  and  John  is  a  terrorist,'  replied  the 
Venerable,  quite  annoyed  at  the  lad's  pertinacity  and  his 
shallow  turn  of  mind.  'The  French  Revolution  is  the 
happy  hunting-ground  of  all  the  phrase-mongers  like  Car- 
lyle,  the  doctrinaires  like  Louis  Blanc,  the  epigrammatists 
like  Michelet  and  Taine,  and  the  liars  like  Thiers  and 
Lamartine.  There  is  no  history  to  be  got  out  of  it  for  a 
century  or  two,  till  all  the  manuscripts  have  been  de- 
ciphered and  all  the  rubbish  that  has  been  published  is 
forgotten.' 

'  Well,  but  come,'  said  Phil  stoutly,  in  his  last  ditch, 
'you  will  not  bar  Froude,  who  made  up  his  history  at 
Simancas,  and  got  all  his  facts  from  unpublished  manu- 
scripts ? ' 

'  Simancas  !  Facts !  Oh,  oh  ! '  laughed  the  Reverend 
^Ethelbald,  with  his  grim  West-Saxon  chuckle.  'Siman- 
cas indeed  !  where,  what,  how  much  ?  what  volume  or  what 
bundle,  what  page,  and  what  folio  ?  MSS.  penes  me  — 
is  a  very  convenient  reference,  but  historians  require  a 
little  more  detail  than  this.  I  am  not  going  to  say  one 
word  against  tue  Regius  Professor,  who  is  an  old  friend 
of  mine  and  has  written  some  very  beautiful  pieces  ;  but, 
when  you  talk  about  "facts,"  I  must  put  you  on  your 
guard.  If  you  never  read  the  Saturday  Review  on 
Fronde's  Becket,  you  had  better  do  so  at  once.  They 
were  telling  a  good  story  in  Common  Room  the  other  day 
about  the  reviewer.  He  hated  music,  and  so  when  he 
intended  to  send  a  smasher  to  the  Saturday,  he  got  some 
one  to  play  him  "  The  Battle  of  Prague,"  or  the  "  Carnaval 


THE    HISTORY    SCHOOLS. 

de  Venise,"  which  would  make  him  dancing  mad,  till  you 
could  hear  the  old  lion's  tail  lashing  his  sides.  I  never 
went  into  the  references  myself  —  it  is  not  in  my  period 
—  but  all  I  say  is  this — that  if  the  references  and  cita- 
tions are  as  full  of  mistakes  as  the  Saturday  said  (mind 
you,  I  only  say  if —  for  I  take  no  part  in  the  quarrel),  it 
is  worse  than  picking  a  pocket.  People  may  wonder  how 
it  is  possible  for  such  things  to  be  done  by  a  dear  old 
man  whom  we  all  love,  who  is  the  soul  of  honour  in  private 
life,  and  who  says  such  beautiful  things  about  religion, 
morality,  and  the  ethics  of  statesmen.  Well !  I  don't 
know ;  but  in  history  you  cannot  trust  a  fellow  who  tries 
to  be  interesting.  If  he  pretends  to  be  "philosophical," 
you  may  know  him  to  be  an  impostor.  But,  if  he  aims 
at  being  interesting  or  at  anything  like  a  fine  picture,  he 
is  not  far  off  saying  the  thing  that  is  not.' 

'  Come,  now,'  cried  Phil  with  spirit,  for  he  felt  that 
his  turn  had  come,  'you  may  talk  about  the  Saturday 
articles,  which  are  ancient  history  in  the  bad  sense  of 
the  term,  but  what  do  you  say  to  the  Quarterly  articles, 
and  the  palpable  blunders  it  exposes  ?  What  about 
Wace's  "palisades"  at  Hastings?  And  why  didn't  Free- 
man cite,  the  Abb6  Baudri  ?  And  why  did  he  misquote 
the  Survey  over  and  over  again  ?  And  why  are  we  not 
to  use  the  fine  old  English  term,  "  Battle  of  Hastings " 
—  the  only  name  given  in  the  Tapestry,  Guy  of  Amiens, 
and  the  rest  —  and  are  told  we  must  always  use,  if  we 
value  truth,  the  term,  "Battle  of  Senlac"  —  a  mere  mythi- 
cal phrase  —  a  piece  of  affectation  of  "dear  old  Orderic  " 
in  his  Norman  monastery?  Why,  years  ago  a  man  in 
the  Nineteenth  Century  pointed  out  that  to  talk  nowadays 
of  the  Battle  of  Senlac  was  as  absurd  as  if  a  Frenchman 
were  now  to  try  to  rechristen  the  Battle  of  Waterloo  the 
Battle  of  Hougoumont !  What  do  you  say  to  the  Quar- 
I 


I3O  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

terly  on  the  Norman  Conquest  ? '  asked  Phil  impetuously, 
for  he  felt  that  he  had  got  his  knife  into  the  Bede. 

'  I  am  sure  we  need  not  mind  all  these  anonymous 
personalities/  said  the  Venerable  one  somewhat  stiffly, 
for  he  felt  that  the  last  Quarterly  article  was  rather  a 
nasty  hit ;  and  as  yet  he  had  not  the  remotest  idea  how 
it  ought  to  be  answered.  '  But  here,  bless  me ! '  he 
cried,  'comes  Middleman,  of  the  House;  what  brings  him 
to  Oxford  just  now,  I  wonder.'  And  indeed,  the  tutor 
was  not  at  all  sorry  that  the  conversation  with  his  young 
friend  should  be  suddenly  broken  off. 

'  Dear  old  man,  what  luck  for  me  to  meet  you,'  said 
the  newcomer  genially ;  '  I  am  going  to  examine  in  the 
Law  School,  and  have  run  up  for  a  couple  of  days  to  con- 
sult about  the  papers.  I  am  staying  with  Bryce,'  he 
explained.  Jack  Middleman,  Q.C.,  was  a  young  lawyer 
of  much  promise ;  he  was  already  in  Parliament  and  had 
expectations  of  office  when  Lord  Salisbury  returns  to 
power.  Though  he  had  been  twelve  years  in  good  prac- 
tice, he  kept  up.  his  reading  and  his  love  of  Oxford. 
The  Courts  were  not  sitting,  'and  he  had  run  up  to  see 
some  of  the  residents. 

'  Our  new  scholar,  Raleigh,'  said  Wessex,  introducing 
Phil  to  the  Q.C.  ;  'he  is  attending  the  lectures  of  the 
Regius  Professor  of  History,  and  I  am  trying  to  show 
him  the  difference  between  the  late  Professor  and  the 
present.  You  can  tell  him  what  Freeman  was,  for  you 
used  to  be  one  of  his  ardent  admirers  and  closest 
henchmen.' 

'  Yes,  indeed,'  said  Middleman  ;  'he  was  a  noble  scholar, 
and  I  read  and  re-read  every  line  he  wrote.  But  there  is 
a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  the  other  method  of  work.' 

'Just  so,'  said  Phil,  much  relieved.  'I  have  been 
sticking  up  for  Froude's  pictures  of  Henry  vni.,  Eliza- 


THE    HISTORY    SCHOOLS.  13! 

beth  and  Mary  of  Scots,  the  Reformation  and  the  Ar- 
mada. I  won't  believe  that  literary  history  is  quite  done 
yet.' 

'  Literary  history ! '  laughed  Wessex,  who  had  re- 
covered his  good  humour ;  '  why  not  say  melodious  sci- 
ence! —  delicious  philosophy!  —  graceful  law!  or  any 
other  paradoxical  confusion  of  metaphors  ?  "  Literary 
history"  is  a  contradiction  in  terms,  is  it  not,  Middle- 
man ? ' 

'Well,'  said  the  lawyer,  who  was  great  at  Nisi  prius, 
'let  us  know  what  we  mean  by  literary  history.  History 
in  which  the  narrative  of  events  is  made  subservient  to 
literary  effect  is  an  impudent  swindle.  But  the  history 
which  has  no  quality  of  literature  at  all,  neither  power  of 
expression  nor  imaginative  insight,  is  nothing  but  mate- 
rials, the  bricks  and  stones  out  of  which  some  one  one 
day  might  build  a  house.  If  "literary  history"  means 
Lamartine's  History  of  the  Girondists,  it  is  a  sneaking 
form  of  the  historical  novel.  But  if  literary  history  means 
Tacitus  and  Gibbon,  it  is  the  highest  and  the  true  form 
of  history.  What  have  you  been  lecturing  upon  this  term, 
Wessex  ? ' 

'Well/  said  the  Venerable,  'for  the  last  three  terms 
we  have  been  on  the  West-Saxon  coinage,  and  the  year 
before  that  I  took  up  the  system  of  frith-borrow? 

'  I  should  like  to  hear  your  course  on  the  legal  and 
administrative  reforms  of  the  Norman  Kings,'  said  the 
lawyer;  'it  is  a  fine  subject,  from  which  we  in  the  Temple 
might  learn  more  than  from  Meeson  and  Welsby? 

'  I  have  not  reached  the  Norman  Conquest  yet/  said 
the  Reverend  ./Ethel bald  simply,  'for  we  have  been  ten 
years  over  the  Old-English  times ;  but  I  hope  to  get  down 
to  Eadweard  before  I  leave  the  college.' 

'  You  have  got  so  fearfully  grilndlich  since  my  time/ 


132  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

said  Jack,  '  that  I  feel  quite  out  of  it  at  Oxford.  History 
seems  to  be  seen  nowadays  with  some  such  apparatus  as 
the  naturalists  describe  the  eye  of  a  fly  magnified  to  ten 
thousand  diameters.  Now,  I  used  to  think  Gibbon  to 
be  the  type  of  a  great  historian.  He  gives  you  in  eight 
volumes  the  history  of  the  civilised  world,  for  a  period 
not  short  of  a  thousand  years,  with  a  scholar's  grasp  of 
the  recorded  facts,  a  masterly  insight  into  the  leading 
movements,  and  a  style  that  moves  on  like  a  Roman 
triumph  in  one  unbroken  but  varied  pageant.  You  have 
not  given  up  Gibbon  at  Oxford,  have  you  ? '  said  the 
lawyer. 

'Oh,  no,'  replied  the  tutor;  but  he  added  with  the 
scintilla  of  a  sneer,  '  Gibbon  made  some  mistakes,  you 
know ;  and  in  the  last  hundred  years  a  good  deal  has  been 
discovered  that  he  never  heard  of.  I  always  warn  our 
young  people  to  read  Gibbon  with  great  caution,  and  never 
without  their  Muratori  and  their  Pertz  at  hand.  It  isn't 
possible,  is  it,'  asked  the  tutor  in  that  sly  way  of  his  which 
so  much  frightened  undergraduates,  '  to  put  the  true  facts 
of  a  century  into  five  hundred  pages  ? ' 

'  You  don't  want  all  the  facts,'  said  Jack  decisively, 
'  and  you  could  not  remember  or  use  a  tenth  part  of  them 
if  you  could  get  them.  And,  what  is  more,  you  cannot 
get  at  the  exact  truth  of  every  fact,  however  much  you 
labour.  Such  minute  accuracy  in  unimportant  trifles  is 
not  only  utterly  unattainable,  but  it  would  be  miserable 
pedantry  to  look  for  it.' 

'  Trifles  ! '  cried  out  the  Venerable  in  horror ;  '  you 
don't  call  any  historical  truths  trifles,  do  you?' 

'  Yes !  I  call  it  an  unimportant  trifle,'  said  Jack, 
'whether  ^Elfgifu  stayed  one  day  or  two  days  at  Cant- 
warabyrig,  and  it  is  waste  of  time  to  discuss  the  question 
in  fifty  pages.  You  see  that  you  cannot  get  at  the  exact 


THE    HISTORY    SCHOOLS.  133 

facts  for  all  your  pains.  You  know  the  row  about  Free- 
man's palisades  at  the  Battle  of  Hastings.  I  pass  no 
opinion,  for  I  would  not  wabte  my  time  over  such  rubbish, 
and  I  don't  care  a  sceat  or  a  stilling  whether  there  were 
palisades  at  Senlac  or  not.  I  daresay  Freeman  made  slips 
like  other  people,  possibly  blunders  —  it  would  be  a  mira- 
cle if  he  did  not.  But  all  this  fuss  about  his  blunders,  and 
much  of  the  fuss  he  made  about  Fronde's  blunders,  is 
poor  fun.  Freeman  was  a  consummate  historical  scholar, 
and  Froude  is  an  elegant  historical  writer,  and  both  have 
given  us  most  interesting  and  valuable  books,  for  which 
we  ought  to  be  truly  grateful,  however  widely  the  two 
books  differ  in  method.' 

'  Does  not  Freeman  overdo  his  love  of  the  Old  Eng- 
lish ? '  said  Phil. 

'  Is  not  Froude  a  blind  advocate  of  Henry  vin.  ? '  asked 
the  tutor. 

'Both  of  them,  no  doubt,  have  very  strong  personal 
feelings  and  keen  party  interests,'  said  the  Q.C.,  'and 
both  might  have  been  free  from  much  of  what  the  world 
calls  their  bias  or  their  prejudice,  if  they  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  deal  with  history  in  a  far  more  general  or  organic 
spirit  as  the  biography  of  mankind  ;  and  if  both  had  not 
striven  to  unravel  every  incident  in  their  limited  periods, 
much  as  we  seek  to  unravel  the  facts  of  a  murder  or  a 
fraud.  When  we  have  a  great  trial  in  court,  we  have  the 
living  witnesses  before  us;  we  confront  them  with  the 
accused ;  we  examine  them  on  oath,  we  cross-examine 
them,  and  re-examine  them  ;  and  then  my  Lord  sums  up 
the  evidence  without  any  kind  of  feeling  in  the  matter, 
and  twelve  jurymen  have  got  to  decide.  Well,  after  all 
that,  we  know  the  jury  do  sometimes  toss  up  for  the 
verdict ;  they  are  very  often  wrong,  but  we  seldom  hang 
the  innocent  man  or  let  off  a  confirmed  rogue.  With  all 


134  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

our  pains,  and  the  cross-examination  of  living  witnesses, 
we  are  often  beaten,  and  admit  that  we  cannot  get  to  the 
bottom  of  it.  No  lawyer  would  hope  to  find  out  the  true 
story  of  anything  if  a  witness  could  never-  be  brought  into 
court,  and  if  no  evidence  could  ever  be  sifted  by  cross- 
examination.  But  cross-examination  is  always  impossible 
to  the  historian.  You  historians  have  only  to  rely  on  the 
most  plausible  story  you  can  find  in  a  bundle  of  old 
papers,  the  origin  of  which  is  usually  doubtful.  How  can 
you  extract  anything  that  we  should  call  legal  evidence 
in  court,  and  how  can  you  get  "at  truth"  by  a  method 
of  investigation  which  any  lawyer  would  tell  you  was 
ridiculous  ? ' 

'  Do  you  mean  to  tell  us  that  the  facts  of  history  are  not 
to  be  discovered  by  competent  research  ? '  asked  the  tutor 
in  dismay. 

'  Certainly,  the  general  facts  of  history  are  ascertainable 
in  all  their  leading  characters,  if  we  are  content  to  strike 
an  average,  or  to  look  at  sufficiently  wide  epochs  and  at 
the  dominant  tendencies  and  creative  spirits.  Research 
and  insight  together  will  enable  you  to  grasp  the  main 
features  of  an  age  and  the  essential  qualities  of  a  great 
man.  But  no  research  and  no  insight,  and  no  labour  and 
no  subdivision  of  labour  will  ever  enable  you  to  reach  the 
literal  and  particular  truth  about  every  minor  incident,  or 
to  penetrate  to  the  inner  motives  and  secret  disposition  of 
every  man  and  woman  who  crosses  the  stage  of  history. 
We  cannot  do  this  for  contemporary  persons  and  events 
around  us,  with  all  the  methods  of  inquiry  which  contem- 
porary facts  and  characters  admit.  Much  less  can  we  do 
it  for  distant  ages,  with  nothing  but  the  remnants  of 
meagre  and  suspicious  records.  People  are  still  disputing 
in  the  newspapers  about  the  famous  ball  before  the  Battle 
of  Waterloo,  and  why  Bazaine  surrendered  Metz,  and  how 


THE    HISTORY    SCHOOLS.  135 

the  Archbishop  was  killed  or  the  Tuileries  burnt  down 
in  the  commune  of  Paris.  If  the  exact  truth  of  what 
happened  a  generation  or  two  ago  is  often  obscure  whilst 
hundreds  of  eye-witnesses  are  still  living,  how  can  you  be 
certain  whether  Harold  built  a  palisade  at  Battle  or  not  ? ' 

'  If  he  didn't/  cried  Wessex,  in  a  visible  pet,  '  I  will 
give  up  Freeman  and  the  Old  English  for  ever ! ' 

'  I  have  far  too  great  admiration  for  Freeman,'  said  the 
young  M.P.,  'to  stake  his  reputation  on  a  matter  of  stakes. 
No  !  Freeman  was  an  indefatigable  inquirer  into  early 
records,  but  he  muddled  away  his  sense  of  proportion. 
He  was  not  a  philosopher  like  Thucydides  and  Tacitus, 
nor  a  great  writer  like  Robertson  and  Gibbon  ;  and  he 
made  the  mistake  of  all  specialists,  that  labour  and  minute- 
ness can  do  the  work  of  imagination  and  insight.  The 
microscopic  eye,  with  its  power  of  ten  thousand  diameters, 
will,  after  all,  only  show  an  infinite  series  of  minute 
specks.  It  will  not  put  them  together,  nor  will  it  make  an 
intelligible  portrait  of  a  whole.  Froude  is  a  fine  writer, 
who  has  painted  a  set  of  brilliant  scenes  ;  but  to  under- 
stand the  great  religious  and  intellectual  forces  of  the 
sixteenth  century  in  Europe  requires  a  far  larger  range 
than  is  disclosed  at  Simancas,  and  a  deeper  philosophy 
than  Carlyle's,  which  may  be  summed  up  as  detestation  of 
Popery  and  the  people.  A  great  history  cannot  be  made 
either  by  microscopic  analysis  or  by  pictorial  bravura. 
The  palaso-photo-graphic  method  only  gives  you  a  shape- 
less pile  of  separate  bricks.  The  chiaroscuro-impressionist 
method  will  give  you  some  glowing  pictures;  but  then 
wicked  people  start  up  and  say  they  are  not  true,  and  not 
fair.' 

'What  method,  then,  has  to  be  followed  by  any  great 
history?'  cried  out  in  the  same  breath  the  tutor  and  the 
freshman. 


136  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

'Well,  what  I  would  advise  a  young  man  going  into  the 
historical  line  to  bespeak  is  —  first,  indefatigable  research 
into  all  the  accessible  materials  ;  secondly,  a  sound  philos- 
ophy of  human  evolution  ;  thirdly,  a  genius  for  seizing  on 
the  typical  movements  and  the  great  men ;  and  lastly,  the 
power  of  a  true  artist  in  grouping  subjects  and  in  describ- 
ing typical  men  and  events.  All  four  are  necessary  ;  and 
you  seem  to  think  at  Oxford  that  the  first  is  enough  with- 
out the  rest.  But,  unless  you  have  a  real  philosophy  of 
history,  you  have  nothing  but  your  own  likings  and  dis- 
likings  to  direct  your  judgment  of  men  and  movements. 
Unless  you  have  the  insight  to  select  and  classify  your 
facts,  you  and  your  readers  will  be  lost  in  a  sea  of  details. 
Not  one  fact  in  a  hundred  is  worth  preservation,  just  as 
biology  could  only  exist  as  a  science  by  judicious  selection 
of  typical  forms.  To  do  anything  else  is  to  assume  that 
induction  could  take  place  in  logic,  as  Aldrich  says,  per 
enumerationem  simplicem.  And  lastly,  unless  you  can 
impress  on  your  readers'  minds  a  vivid  idea  of  some  given 
world  or  some  representative  man,  you  will  only  send 
them  to  sleep.  If  the  historical  romance  can  do  nothing 
but  mislead,  the  historical  ditch-water  will  only  disgust.' 

'  And  who  ever  united  all  these  four  qualifications  ? '  said 
the  tutor. 

'  Why,  Gibbon  did,  or  very  nearly,  and  that  is  his 
supreme  merit.  He  was  as  learned  as  Mommsen,  and  as 
accurate  as  Freeman  ;  he  had  something  of  the  philosophy 
of  Hume,  and  almost  as  much  critical  judgment  as  Robert- 
son ;  and  he  was  nearly  as  great  an  artist  as  Herodotus  or 
Livy.  Mommsen's  Rome  might  be  put  beside  Gibbon's 
for  its  learning,  insight,  judgment,  and  concentration  had 
he  only  a  spark  of  Gibbon's  fire  and  art.  But  as  a  German, 
how  could  we  expect  it  from  him  ?  Henri  Martin's  France 
might  be  named  with  Gibbon's  Rome  if  the  worthy  French- 


THE    HISTORY    SCHOOLS.  137 

man  had  been  equal  to  six  volumes  instead  of  sixteen. 
Crete's  Greece  is  a  fine  book,  but,  like  Freeman,  he  is 
overwhelmed  in  the  volume  of  his  own  minutice  and  his 
extravagant  passion  for  his  Chosen  People.' 

'  And  is  that  the  whole  of  the  list  you  could  make  of  the 
really  good  histories  ? '  asked  the  tutor. 

'  Not  at  all,'  replied  the  lawyer  ;  '  there  are  plenty  of 
good  books  —  but  I  should  hardly  call  any  of  them  great 
by  the  side  of  Gibbon.  There  is  Milman's  Latin  Chris- 
tianity, and  Curtius  and  Dunker,  Thirlwall's  Greece,  Meri- 
vale's  Rome,  Michelet's  France,  Finlay's  Greece,  Carlyle's 
Cromwell,  and  Ranke's  Popes,  Duruy's  Rome,  Green's 
Short  History,  and  a  dozen  more,  not  to  weary  you  with  a 
catalogue.  But  they  all,  no  doubt,  have  their  limitations. 
Some  are  not  adequately  critical  ;  some  fall  short  in  real 
study  ;  some  are  more  or  less  perverse  ;  and  some  are 
indifferent  artists.' 

'  Not  one  of  them  can  be  put  beside  the  Norman  Con- 
guest  for  profound  research,'  cried  Wessex. 

'  Nor  beside  Fronde  for  beauty  of  style,'  cried  Phil. 

'Well,  I  admire  both,  as  I  tell  you,'  said  Jack,  'but  I 
doubt  if  the  method  of  either  is  destined  to  give  us  much 
more  in  the  future.  The  vast  accumulation  of  historical 
material  is  an  excellent  and  essential  thing.  But  to  deluge 
the  world  with  mere  extracts  and  translations  of  these  un- 
digested documents,  as  the  host  of  Freemanikins  threaten 
to  do,  is  a  dismal  outlook.  If  the  history  of  the  world  is 
to  be  written  on  that  scale,  the  British  Museum  will  not 
contain  the  books  that  shall  be  written.  And  no  human 
intellect  could  master  or  use  them  when  they  were  written. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  pictorial  method  is  constantly  seduc- 
ing its  votaries  into  inaccurate,  garbled,  and  over-coloured 
pictures.  We  want  more  concentration,  greater  breadth, 
a  higher  philosophy.' 


138  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

'  You  speak  as  if  history  were  played  out,'  said  the 
Bede. 

'  It  has  to  be  put  upon  a  new  footing,  I  firmly  believe,' 
said  the  politician.  '  History  is  only  one  department  of 
Sociology,  just  as  Natural  History  is  the  descriptive  part 
of  Biology.  And  History  will  have  to  be  brought  most 
strictly  under  the  guidance  and  inspiration  of  Social  Phi- 
losophy. The  day  of  the  chronicler  is  past  ;  the  day  of  the 
litterateur  is  past.  The  field  of  knowledge  is  too  vast  for 
the  whole  of  the  facts  to  be  set  forth,  or  a  tenth  of  them. 
To  confine  ourselves  to  "  periods  "  is  to  destroy  our  sense 
of  unity  and  proportion,  and  to  weaken  our  brain  by  ceas- 
ing to  regard  history  as  the  handmaid  and  instrument  of 
Social  Philosophy.  Excerpts  from  ten  thousand  chronicles 
are  useful  as  dictionaries  and  collections,  but  they  are  a 
mere  nuisance  as  continuous  histories.  It  may  be  that 
Gibbon's  masterpiece  is  destined  to  be  the  last  example  of 
that  rarest  of  combinations  —  profound  scholarship  with 
splendid  art.  Since  his  age  there  has  grown  up  a  sense  of 
the  unity  of  human  evolution  and  a  solid  philosophy  of 
society.  The  histories  of  the  future  will,  no  doubt,  fill  up 
and  complete,  illustrate,  and  correct,  that  general  plan  of 
the  biography  of  humanity.  They  will  follow,  more  likely, 
the  method  of  Mommsen  in  his  Roman  Provinces,  or  Bishop 
Stubbs's  Constitutional  History  —  the  fine  old  way  of 
Heeren,  Hallam,  Guizot ;  they  group  movements  and  forces, 
rather  than  narrate  events.  They  will  no  longer  chronicle 
small  beer  or  paint  melodramatic  scenes.  They  will  illus- 
trate philosophy.' 

'  Well,  good-bye,  Wessex,'  said  Jack  ;  '  I  hope  that  next 
time  we  meet,  you  will  have  got  on  to  the  Norman  Kings  — 
they  were  worth  a  score  of  Ecgberhts  —  and  I  hope  my 
young  friend  here  will  one  day  write  another  prize  essay 
fit  to  compare  with  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  I  must  be 
off  :  the  Magdalen  bells  have  begun.' 


CHAPTER  V. 

A  SURVEY  OF  THE  THIRTEENTH  CENTURY.1 

HE  who  would  understand  the  Middle  Ages  must  make 
a  special  study  of  the  thirteenth  century  —  one  of  the 
landmarks  between  the  ancient  and  the  modern  world,  one 
of  the  most  pregnant,  most  organic,  most  memorable,  in 
the  annals  of  mankind.  It  is  an  epoch  (perhaps  the  last 
of  the  centuries  of  which  this  can  be  said)  crowded  with 
names  illustrious  in  action,  in  thought,  in  art,  in  religion 
equally ;  which  is  big  with  those  problems,  intellectual, 
social,  political,  and  spiritual  that  six  succeeding  centuries 
have  in  vain  toiled  to  solve. 

A  '  Century  '  is,  of  course,  a  purely  arbitrary  limit  of 
time.  But  for  practical  purposes  we  can  only  reckon  by 
years  and  groups  of  years.  And,  as  in  the  biography  of  a 
man,  we  speak  of  the  happy  years  of  a  life,  or  a  decade  of 
great  activity,  so  it  is  convenient  to  speak  of  a  brilliant 
'  century,'  if  we  attach  no  mysterious  value  to  our  artificial 
measure  of  time.  It  happens,  however,  that  the  thirteenth 
century  not  only  has  a  really  distinctive  character  of  its 
own,  but  that,  near  to  its  beginning  and  to  its  close,  very 
typical  events  occurred.  In  1198  took  place  the  election 
of  Innocent  in.,  the  most  successful,  perhaps  the  most 
truly  representative  name,  of  all  the  mediaeval  popes.  In 
the  year  preceding  (1197)  we  may  see  the  Empire  visibly 
beginning  to  change  its  spirit  with  the  death  of  Henry  vi., 
the  ferocious  son  of  Barbarossa.  In  the  year  following 

1  Fortnightly  Revieiv,  vol.  50,  N.s.     September  1891. 
139 


I4O  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

(1199)  died  Richard  Lion-heart,  the  last  of  the  Anglo- 
French  sovereigns,  and,  we  may  say,  the  last  of  the  genuine 
Crusader  kings,  to  be  succeeded  by  his  brother  John,  who 
was  happily  forced  to  become  an  English  king,  and  to 
found  the  Constitution  of  England  by  signing  the  Great 
Charter. 

And  at  the  end  of  the  century,  its  last  year  (1300)  is 
the  date  of  the  ominous  'Jubilee'  of  the  Papacy  —  the 
year  in  which  Dante  places  his  great  poem  —  a  year  which 
is  one  of  the  most  convenient  points  in  the  memoria  tech- 
nica  of  modern  history.  Three  years  later  died  Boniface 
viii.,  after  the  tremendous  humiliation  which  marked  the 
manifest  decadence  of  the  Papacy  ;  eight  years  later  began 
the  '  Babylonish  Captivity,'  the  seventy  years'  exile  of  the 
Papacy  at  Avignon  ;  then  came  the  ruin  of  the  Templars 
throughout  Europe,  and  all  the  tragedies  and  convulsions 
which  mark  the  reigns  of  Philip  the  Fair  in  France,  Edward 
ii.  in  England,  and  the  confusion  that  overtook  the  Empire 
on  the  death  of  Henry  of  Luxembourg,  that  last  hope  of 
imperial  ambition.  Thus,  taking  the  period  between  the 
election  of  Innocent  in.,  in  1 198,  and  the  removal  of  the 
Papacy  to  Avignon,  in  1308,  we  find  a  very  definite  char- 
acter in  the  thirteenth  century.  It  would,  of  course,  be 
necessary  to  fix  the  view  on  Europe  as  a  whole,  or  rather 
on  Latin  Christendom,  to  obtain  any  unity  of  conception  ; 
and,  obviously,  the  development  and  decay  of  the  Church 
must  be  the  central  point,  for  this  is  at  once  the  most 
general  and  the  important  element  in  the  common  life  of 
Christendom. 

Within  the  limits  of  the  thirteenth  century,  so  under- 
stood, a  series  of  striking  events  and  great  names  is  crowded 
—  the  growth,  culmination,  extravagance,  and  then  the 
humiliation  of  the  Papal  See ;  the  eighteen  years'  rule  of 
Innocent  m.,  the  fourteen  years  of  Gregory  ix.,  the  twenty- 


A  SURVEY  OF  THE  THIRTEENTH  CENTURY.     14! 

one  of  Innocent  iv. ;  the  short  revival  of  Gregory  x. ;  the 
ambition,  the  pride,  the  degradation,  and  shame  of  Boni- 
face viii.  The  great  experiment  to  organise  Christendom 
under  a  single  spiritual  sovereign  had  been  made  by  some 
of  the  most  aspiring  natures,  and  the  most  consummate 
politicians  who  ever  wore  mitre  —  had  been  made  and 
failed.  When  the  Popes  returned  from  Avignon  to  Rome 
in  1378,  after  the  seventy  years  of  exile  from  their  capital, 
it  was  to  find  the  Catholic  world  rent  with  schism,  a  series 
of  anti-popes,  heresy,  and  the  seeds  of  the  Reformation  in 
England  and  in  Germany.  Thus  the  secession  to  Avignon 
in  the  opening  of  the  fourteenth  century  was  the  beginning 
of  the  end  of  spiritual  unity  for  Latin  Christendom. 

At  the  very  opening  of  the  thirteenth  century,  the 
diversion  of  the  Crusade  to  the  capture  of  Constantinople 
in  1204,  and  all  the  incidents  of  that  unholy  war,  prove 
that,  as  a  moral  and  spiritual  movement,  the  era  of  Godfrey 
and  Tancred,  of  Peter  the  Hermit  and  Bernard  of  Clair- 
vaux  was  ended  ;  and  though,  for  a  century  or  two,  kings 
took  the  Cross,  like  St.  Louis  and  our  Edward  i.,  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  or,  like  our  Henry  v.,  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  talked  of  so  doing,  the  hope  of  annihilating  Islam 
was  gone  for  ever,  and  Christendom,  for  four  centuries, 
had  enough  to  do  to  protect  Europe  itself  from  the  Moslem. 
And  within  a  few  years  of  this  cynical  prostitution  of  the 
Crusading  enthusiasm  in  the  conquest  of  Byzantium,  the 
Crusading  passion  broke  out  in  the  dreadful  persecution 
of  the  Albigenses  and  the  Crusade  against  heresy  of  Simon 
de  Montfort.  And  hardly  was  the  unity  of  Christendom 
assured  by  blood  and  terror,  when  the  spiritual  Crusades 
of  Francis  and  Dominic  begin,  and  the  contagious  zeal  of 
the  Mendicant  Friars  restored  the  force  of  the  Church,  and 
gave  it  a  new  era  of  moral  and  social  vitality. 

Now,  whilst  the  Popes  were  making  their  last  grand 


142  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

rally  to  weld  Christendom  into  spiritual  unity,  in  France, 
in  England,  in  Spain,  in  North  Italy,  in  South  Italy,  in 
Southern  Germany,  in  a  minor  degree  throughout  central 
Europe,  princes  of  great  energy  were  organising  the  germs 
of  nations,  and  were  founding  the  institutions  of  complex 
civil  administration.  Monarchy,  municipalities,  nations, 
and  organised  government,  national  constitutions,  codes 
of  law,  a  central  police,  and  international  trade  were  grow- 
ing uniformly  throughout  the  entire  century.  Feudalism, 
strictly  so  called,  the  baron's  autocracy,  baronial  war,  and 
the  manor  court,  were  as  rapidly  dying  down.  Crushed 
between  the  hammer  of  the  kings  and  the  anvil  of  the 
burghers,  the  feudal  chivalry  suffered,  in  many  a  bloody 
field,  a  series  of  shameful  overthrows  all  through  the  four- 
teenth century,  until  it  ended  in  the  murderous  orgies  of 
the  fifteenth  century.  But  it  was  the  thirteenth  century 
that  established  throughout  Europe  the  two  great  forces 
of  the  future  which  were  to  divide  the  inheritance  of  feu- 
dalism —  a  civilised  and  centralised  monarchy  on  the  one 
hand,  a  rich,  industrious,  resolute  people  on  the  other 
hand. 

It  was  the  thirteenth  century,  moreover,  that  saw  the 
great  development  of  the  manufacturing  and  trading  cities 
north  of  the  Alps.  Down  to  the  expulsion  of  the  Chris- 
tians  from  Palestine,  at  the  close  of  the  twelfth  century, 
there  had  been  few  cities  in  Europe  of  wealth  and  impor- 
tance outside  Italy  and  the  South  of  France  and  of  Spain. 
But  the  next  hundred  years  founded  the  greatness  of  cities 
like  Paris  and  London,  of  Troyes,  Rouen,  Lyons,  Bordeaux, 
Bruges,  Ghent,  Cologne,  Strasburg,  Basle,  Nuremberg, 
Bremen,  Lubeck,  Hamburg,  Dantzic,  Winchester,  Nor- 
wich, Exeter,  Bristol.  The  Crusades  had  brought  Europe 
together,  and  had  brought  the  West  face  to  face  with  the 
East.  Mankind  had  ceased  to  be  ascriptu s  glebce,  locally 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  143 

bound  to  a  few  clearings  on  the  earth.  It  had  begun  to 
understand  the  breadth  and  variety  of  the  planet,  and  the 
infinite  resources  of  its  products.  Industrial  exchange  on 
a  world-wide  scale  began  again  after  a  long  interval  of  ten 
centuries. 

The  latter  half  of  this  same  century  also  saw  the  birth 
of  that  characteristic  feature  of  modern  society  —  the 
control  of  political  power  by  representative  assemblies. 
For  the  first  time  in  Europe  deputies  from  the  towns  take 
part  in  the  national  councils.  In  Spain  this  may  be  traced 
even  before  the  century  begins.  Early  in  the  century  it 
is  found  in  Sicily  ;  about  the  middle  of  the  century  we 
trace  it  in  England  and  Germany ;  and  finally,  in  France. 
As  every  one  knows,  it  was  in  1264  that  Simon  de  Mont- 
fort  summoned  to  Parliament  knights  of  each  shire,  and 
two  representatives  from  boroughs  and  cities ;  and,  in 
1295,  Edward  i.  called  together  the  first  fully-constituted 
Parliament  as  now  understood  in  England.  The  States- 
General  of  France,  the  last  and  the  least  memorable  of 
all  national  Parliaments,  were  only  seven  years  subsequent 
to  the  formal  inauguration  of  the  Parliament  of  England. 
The  introduction  of  Parliamentary  representation  would 
alone  suffice  to  make  memorable  the  thirteenth  century. 

The  same  age,  too,  which  was  so  fertile  in  new  political 
ideas  and  in  grand  spiritual  effort,  was  no  less  rich  in 
philosophy,  in  the  germs  of  science,  in  reviving  the  in- 
heritance of  ancient  learning,  in  the  scientific  study  of  law, 
in  the  foundation  of  the  great  Northern  universities,  in  the 
magnificent  expansion  of  the  architecture  we  call  Gothic, 
in  the  beginnings  of  painting  and  of  sculpture,  in  the 
foundation  of  modern  literature,  both  in  prose  and  verse, 
in  the  fullest  development  of  the  Troubadours,  the  Ro- 
mance poets,  the  lays,  sonnets,  satires,  and  tales  of  Italy, 
Provence,  and  Flanders  ;  and  finally,  in  that  stupendous 


144  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

poem,  which  we  universally  accept  as  the  greatest  of 
modern  epical  works,  wherein  the  most  splendid  genius 
of  the  Middle  Ages  seemed  to  chant  its  last  majestic 
requiem,  which  he  himself,  as  I  have  said,  emphatically 
dated  in  the  year  1300.  Truly,  if  we  must  use  arbitrary 
numbers  to  help  our  memory,  that  year —  1300  —  may  be 
taken  as  the  resplendent  sunset  of  an  epoch  which  had 
extended  in  one  form  back  for  nearly  one  thousand  years 
to  the  fall  of  the  Roman  empire,  and  equally  as  the  broken 
and  stormy  dawn  of  an  epoch  which  has  for  six  hundred 
years  since  been  passing  through  an  amazing  phantasma- 
goria of  change. 

Now  this  great  century,  the  last  of  the  true  Middle 
Ages,  which,  as  it  drew  to  its  own  end,  gave  birth  to 
Modern  Society,  has  a  special  character  of  its  own^  a  char- 
acter that  gives  to  it  an  abiding  and  enchanting  interest. 
We  find  in  it  a  harmony  of  power,  a  universality  of  endow- 
ment, a  glow,  an  aspiring  ambition  and  confidence,  such 
as  we  never  again  find  in  later  centuries,  at  least  so  gener- 
ally and  so  permanently  diffused.  At  the  opening  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  Christendom,  as  a  whole,  rested  united 
in  profound  belief  in  one  religious  faith.  There  had  ap- 
peared in  the  age  preceding  teachers  of  new  doctrines, 
like  Abailard,  Gilbert  de  la  Poree,  Arnold  of  Brescia,  and 
others  ;  but  their  new  ideas  had  not  at  all  penetrated  to 
the  body  of  the  people.  As  a  whole,  Christendom  had 
still,  as  the  century  began,  an  unquestioned  and  unques- 
tionable creed,  without  schism,  heresy,  doubts,  or  sects. 
And  this  creed  still  sufficed  to  inspire  the  most  profound 
thought,  the  most  lofty  poetry,  the  widest  culture,  the 
freest  art  of  the  age  :  it  filled  statesmen  with  awe,  scholars 
with  enthusiasm,  and  consolidated  society  around  uniform 
objects  of  reverence  and  worship.  It  bound  men  together, 
from  the  Hebrides  to  the  Eastern  Mediterranean,  from  the 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  145 

Atlantic  to  the  Baltic,  as  European  men  have  never  since 
been  bound.  Great  thinkers,  like  Albert  of  Cologne  and 
Aquinas,  found  it  to  be  the  stimulus  of  their  meditations. 
Mighty  poets,  like  Dante,  could  not  conceive  poetry,  un- 
less based  on  it  and  saturated  with  it.  Creative  artists, 
like  Giotto,  found  it  an  ever-living  well-spring  of  pure 
beauty.  The  great  cathedrals  embodied  it  in  a  thousand 
forms  of  glory  and  power.  To  statesman,  artist,  poet, 
thinker,  teacher,  soldier,  worker,  chief,  or  follower,  it  sup- 
plied at  once  inspiration  and  instrument. 

This  unity  of  creed  had  existed,  it  is  true,  for  five  or  six 
centuries  in  large  parts  of  Europe,  and,  indeed,  in  a  shape 
even  more  uniform  and  intense.  But  not  till  the  thir- 
teenth century  did  it  co-exist  with  such  acute  intellectual 
energy,  with  such  philosophic  power,  with  such  a  free  and 
superb  art,  with  such  sublime  poetry,  with  so  much  indus- 
try, culture,  wealth,  and  so  rich  a  development  of  civic 
organisation.  This  thirteenth  century  was  the  last  in  the 
history  of  mankind  in  Europe  when  a  high  and  complex 
civilisation  has  been  saturated  with  a  uniform  and  unques- 
tioned creed.  As  we  all  know,  since  then,  civilisation  has 
had  to  advance  with  ever-increasing  multiplicity  of  creeds. 
What  impresses  us  as  the  keynote  of  that  century  is  the 
harmony  of  power  it  displays.  As  in  the  Augustan  age, 
or  the  Periclean  age,  or  the  Homeric  age,  indeed,  far  more 
than  in  any  of  them,  men  might  fairly  dream,  in  the  age  of 
Innocent  and  St.  Louis,  that  they  had  reached  a  normal 
state,  when  human  life  might  hope  to  see  an  ultimate 
symmetry  of  existence.  There  have  been  since  epochs 
of  singular  intellectual  expansion,  of  creative  art,  of  mate- 
rial progress,  of  moral  earnestness,  of  practical  energy. 
Our  nineteenth  century  has  very  much  of  all  of  these  in 
varying  proportions.  But  we  have  long  ceased  to  expect 
that  they  will  not  clash  with  each  other ;  we  have  aban- 
K 


146  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

doned  hope  of  ever  seeing  them  work  in  organic  harmony 
together. 

Now  the  thirteenth  century  was  an  era  of  no  one  special 
character.  It  was  in  nothing  one-sided,  and  in  nothing 
discordant.  It  had  great  thinkers,  great  rulers,  great 
teachers,  great  poets,  great  artists,  great  moralists,  and 
great  workers.  It  could  not  be  called  the  material  age, 
the  devotional  age,  the  political  age,  or  the  poetic  age,  in 
any  special  degree.  It  was  equally  poetic,  political,  indus- 
trial, artistic,  practical,  intellectual,  and  devotional.  And 
these  qualities  acted  in  harmony  on  a  uniform  conception 
of  life,  with  a  real  symmetry  of  purpose.  There  was  one 
common  creed,  one  ritual,  one  worship,  one  sacred  lan- 
guage, one  Church,  a  single  code  of  manners,  a  "uniform 
scheme  of  society,  a  common  system  of  education,  an 
accepted  type  of  beauty,  a  universal  art,  something  like  a 
recognised  standard  of  the  Good,  the  Beautiful,  and  the 
True.  One  half  of  the  world  was  not  occupied  in  ridicul- 
ing or  combating  what  the  other  half  was  doing.  Nor 
were  men  absorbed  in  ideals  of  their  own,  whilst  treating 
the  ideals  of  their  neighbours  as  matters  of  indifference 
and  waste  of  power.  Men  as  utterly  different  from  each 
other  as  were  Stephen  Langton,  St.  Francis,  Thomas  Aqui- 
nas, Roger  Bacon,  Dante,  Giotto,  St.  Louis,  Edward  i.  — 
all  profoundly  accepted  one  common  order  of  ideas,  equally 
applying  to  things  of  the  intellect,  of  moral  duty,  of  action, 
and  of  the  soul  —  to  public  and  private  life  at  once  —  and 
they  could  all  feel  that  they  were  together  working  out 
the  same  task.  It  may  be  doubted  if  that  has  ever  hap- 
pened in  Europe  since. 

To  point  out  the  peculiar  character  of  an  age  is  not  to 
praise  it  without  reserve  :  much  less  to  ask  men  to  return 
to  it  now.  No  one  can  now  be  suspected  of  sighing  for 
the  time  of  Innocent  in.,  of  St.  Francis  and  St.  Louis ; 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  147 

nor  do  reasonable  historians  deny  that  their  simple  beliefs 
and  ideas  are  frankly  incompatible  with  all  that  to-day  we 
call  freedom,  science,  and  progress.  Let  us  be  neither 
reactionary,  nor  obscurantist,  neither  Catholic  nor  abso- 
lutist in  sympathy,  but  seek  only  to  understand  an  age  in 
its  own  spirit,  and  from  the  field  of  its  own  ideas.  Nor 
need  we  forget  how  the  uniform  creed  of  Christendom 
was  shaken,  even  in  the  thirteenth  century,  by  fierce 
spasms  which  ended  too  often  in  blood  and  horror.  Their 
social  system  certainly  was  not  without  struggles  ;  for  the 
thirteenth  century  was  no  golden  era,  nor  did  the  lion  lie 
down  with  the  lamb  or  consent  to  be  led  by  a  little  child. 
We  cannot  forget  either  Albigensian  War  or  Runnymede, 
nor  our  Barons'  War,  nor  Guelphs  and  Ghibellines,  nor  the 
history  of  Frederick  n.,  Manfred,  and  Conradino,  nor  the 
fall  of  Boniface,  nor  the  Sicilian  Vespers.  And  yet  we 
may  confidently  maintain  that  there  was  a  real  coherence 
of  belief,  sentiment,  manners,  and  life  in  the  thirteenth 
century. 

Perhaps  we  ought  rather  to  say,  in  its  earlier  genera- 
tions and  for  the  great  mass  of  its  people  and  doings. 
For  we  may  see  the  seed  of  divergencies,  heresies,  insur- 
rections, civil  war,  anarchy,  discord,  doubt,  and  rebellion 
in  Church,  State,  society,  and  habits,  gathering  up  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  and  especially  definite  in  its  stormy 
and  ominous  close.  In  Roger  Bacon,  even  in  Aquinas, 
nay,  in  Dante,  there  lie  all  the  germs  of  the  intellectual 
dilemmas  which  shook  Catholicism  to  its  foundations. 
Francis  and  Dominic,  if  they  gave  the  Church  a  magnifi- 
cent rally,  saved  her  by  remedies  which  a  cool  judgment 
must  pronounce  to  be  suicidal.  Our  Edward  i.,  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  had  to  deal  with  the  same  rebellious 
forces  which  made  the  reign  of  our  Henry  vi.,  in  the  fif- 
teenth century,  a  record  of  blood  and  anarchy.  Boniface, 


148  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

Philip  the  Fair,  even  Edward  i.,  did  violent  things  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  which  Churchmen  and  princes  after 
them  hardly  exceeded.  And  there  are  profanities  and 
ribaldries  in  the  thirteenth-century  poetry  which  Rabelais, 
Voltaire,  and  Diderot  have  not  surpassed.  But  in  judg- 
ing an  epoch  one  has  to  weigh  how  far  those  things  were 
common  and  characteristic  of  it,  how  far  they  deeply  and 
widely  affected  it.  Judged  by  these  tests,  we  must  say 
that  scepticism,  anarchy,  ribaldry,  and  hypocrisy,  however 
latent  in  the  thirteenth  century,  had  not  yet  eaten  out  its 
soul. 

It  may  surprise  some  readers  to  treat  the  thirteenth 
century  as  the  virtual  close  of  the  Middle  Ages,  an  epoch 
which  is  usually  placed  in  the  latter  half  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  in  the  age  of  Louis  XL,  Henry  vn.,  and  Ferdi- 
nand of  Arragon.  But  the  true  spirit  of  Feudalism,  the 
living  soul  of  Catholicism,  which  together  make  up  the 
compound  type  of  society  we  call  mediaeval,  were,  in  point 
of  fact,  waning  all  through  the  thirteenth  century.  The 
hurly-burly  of  the  fourteenth  and  the  first  half  of  the  fif- 
teenth centuries  was  merely  one  long  and  cruel  death 
agony.  Nay,  the  inner  soul  of  Catholic  Feudalism  quite 
ended  in  the  first  generation  of  the  thirteenth  century  — 
with  St.  Dominic,  St.  Francis,  Innocent  in.,  Philip  Au- 
gustus, and  Otto  iv.,  Stephen  Langton,  and  William,  Earl 
Mareschal.  The  truly  characteristic  period  of  mediaeval- 
ism  is  in  the  twelfth,  rather  than  the  thirteenth,  century, 
the  period  covered  by  the  first  three  Crusades  from  1094, 
the  date  of  the  Council  of  Clermont,  to  1192,  when  Cceur- 
de-Lion  withdrew  from  the  Holy  Land.  Or,  if  we  put  it 
a  little  wider  in  limits,  we  may  date  true  mediaevalism  from 
the  rise  of  Hildebrand,  about  1070,  to  the  death  of  Inno- 
cent in.  in  1216,  or  just  about  a  century  and  a  half.  St. 
Louis  himself,  as  we  read  Joinville's  Memoirs ;  seems  to  us 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  149 

a  man  belated,  born  too  late,  and  almost  an  anachronism 
in  the  second  half  of  the  thirteenth  century. 

We  know  that  in  the  slow  evolution  of  society  the  social 
brilliancy  of  a  movement  is  seldom  visible,  and  is  almost 
never  ripe  for  poetic  and  artistic  idealisation  until  the 
energy  "of  the  movement  itself  is  waning,  or  even  it  may 
be,  is  demonstrably  spent.  Shakespeare  prolonged  the 
Renascence  of  the  fifteenth  century,  the  Renascence  of 
Leonardo  and  Raphael,  into  the  seventeenth  century, 
when  Puritanism  was  in  full  career ;  and  Shakespeare  — 
it  is  deeply  significant  —  died  on  the  day  when  Oliver 
Cromwell  entered  college  at  Cambridge.  And  so,  when 
Dante,  in  his  Vision  of  1300,  saw  the  heights  and  the 
depths  of  Catholic  Feudalism,  he  was  looking  back  over 
great  movements  which  were  mighty  forces  a  hundred 
years  earlier.  Just  so,  though  the  thirteenth  century 
contained  within  its  bosom  the  plainest  proofs  that  the 
mediaeval  world  was  ending,  the  flower,  the  brilliancy,  the 
variety,  the  poetry,  the  soul  of  the  mediaeval  world,  were 
never  seen  in  so  rich  a  glow  as  in  the  thirteenth  century, 
its  last  great  effort. 

In  a  brief  review  of  each  of  the  dominant  movements 
which  give  so  profound  a  character  to  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury as  a  whole,  one  begins  naturally  with  the  central 
movement  of  all  —  the  Church.  The  thirteenth  century 
was  the  era  of  the  culmination,  the  over-straining,  and  then 
the  shameful  defeat  of  the  claim  made  by  the  Church  of 
Rome  to  a  moral  and  spiritual  autocracy  in  Christendom. 
There  are  at  least  five  Popes  in  that  one  hundred  years 
—  Innocent  in.,  Gregory  ix.,  Innocent  iv.,  Gregory  x., 
and  Boniface  vm. — whose  characters  impress  us  with  a 
sense  of  power  or  of  astounding  desire  of  power,  whose 
lives  are  romances  and  dreams,  and  whose  careers  are 
amongst  the  most  instructive  in  history.  He  who  would 


I5<D  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

understand  the  Middle  Ages  must  study  from  beginning  to 
end  the  long  and  crowded  Pontificate  of  Innocent  in.  In 
genius,  in  commanding  nature,  in  intensity  of  character,  in 
universal  energy,  in  aspiring  designs,  Innocent  in.  has  few 
rivals  in  the  fourteenth  centuries  of  the  Roman  Pontiffs, 
and  few  superiors  in  any  age  on  any  throne  in  the  world. 
His  eighteen  years  of  rule,  from  1198  to  1216,  were  one 
long  effort,  for  the  moment  successful,  and  in  part  deserv- 
ing success,  to  enforce  on  the  kings  and  peoples  of  Europe 
a  higher  morality,  respect  for  the  spiritual  mission  of  the 
Church,  and  a  sense  of  their  common  civilisation.  We 
feel  that  he  is  truly  a  great  man  with  a  noble  cause,  when 
the  Pope  forces  Philip  Augustus  to  take  back  the  wife  he 
had  so  insolently  cast  off,  when  the  Pope  forces  John  to 
respect  the  rights  of  all  his  subjects,  laymen  or  churchmen, 
when  the  Pope  gives  to  England  the  best  of  her  Primates, 
Stephen  Langton,  the  principal  author  of  our  Great  Char- 
ter, when  the  Pope  accepts  the  potent  enthusiasm  of  the 
New  Friars  and  sends  them  forth  on  their  mission  of 
revivalism. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  enter  on  one  of  the  most  difficult 
problems  in  history  to  decide  how  far  the  development  and 
organisation  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  the  Middle  Ages 
were  worth  the  price  that  civilisation  paid  in  moral,  intel- 
lectual, and  in  material  loss.  Still  less  can  we  attempt  to 
justify  such  Crusades  as  that  which  established  the  Latin 
kingdom  in  Constantinople,  or  the  Crusade  to  crush  the 
revolt  of  the  Albigensian  heretics,  and  all  the  enormous 
assumptions  of  Innocent  in  things  temporal  and  things 
spiritual.  But  before  we  decide  that  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury civilisation  would  have  been  the  gainer,  if  there  had 
been  no  central  Church  at  all,  let  us  count  up  all  the  great 
brains  of  the  time,  with  Aquinas  and  Dante  at  their  head, 
all  the  great  statesmen,  St.  Louis,  Blanche  of  Castile,  in 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  !$! 

France ;  Simon  de  Montfort  and  Edward  i.,  in  England, 
and  Ferdinand  in.,  in  Spain ;  Frederick  u.  and  Rudolph  of 
Hapsburg,  in  the  Empire, — who  might  in  affairs  of  state 
often  oppose  Churchmen,  but  who  felt  that  society  itself 
reposed  on  a  well-ordered  Church. 

If  the  great  attempt  failed  in  the  hands  of  Innocent  in., 
surely  one  of  the  finest  brains  and  noblest  natures  that 
Rome  ever  sent  forth  —  and  fail  it  did  on  the  whole,  ex- 
cept as  a  temporary  expedient  —  it  could  not  succeed  with 
smaller  men,  when  every  generation  made  the  conditions 
of  success  more  hopeless.  The  superhuman  pride  of  Greg- 
ory ix.,  the  venerable  pontiff  who  for  fourteen  years  de- 
fied the  whole  strength  of  the  Emperor  Frederick  n., 
seems  to  us  to-day,  in  spite  of  his  lofty  spirit,  but  to  parody 
that  of  Hildebrand,  of  Alexander  in.,  and  Innocent  in. 
And  when  we  come  to  Innocent  iv.  (1243-1264),  the  dis- 
turber of  the  peace  of  the  Empire,  he  is  almost  a  forecast 
of  Boniface  vui.  And  Boniface  himself  (1294-1303), 
though  his  words  were  more  haughty  than  those  of  the 
mightiest  of  his  predecessors,  though  insatiable  ambition 
and  audacious  intrigue  gave  him  some  moments  of  triumph, 
ended  after  nine  years  of  desperate  struggle  in  what  the 
poet  calls  'the  mockery,  the  vinegar,  the  gall  of  a  new  cru- 
cifixion of  the  Vicar  of  Christ.'  Read  Dante,  and  see  all 
that  a  great  spirit  in  the  Middle  Ages  could  still  hope  from 
the  Church  and  its  chiefs  —  all  that  made  such  dreams  a 
mockery  and  a  delusion. 

When  Dante  wrote,  the  Popes  were  already  settled  at 
Avignon  and  the  Church  had  entered  upon  one  of  its  worst 
eras.  And  as  we  follow  his  scathing  indignation,  in  the 
nineteenth  canto  of  the  Inferno,  or  in  the  twenty-seventh 
of  the  Paradise,  we  feel  how  utterly  the  vision  of  Peter 
had  failed  to  be  realised  on  earth.  But  for  one  hundred 
years  before,  all  through  the  thirteenth  century,  the  writing 


152  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

on  the  wall  may  now  be  read,  in  letters  of  fire.  When 
Saladin  forced  the  allied  kings  of  Europe  to  abandon  the 
conquest  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre,  and  Lion-hearted  Richard 
turned  back  in  despair  (1192),  the  Crusades,  as  military 
movements,  ended.  The  later  Crusades  of  the  thirteenth 
century  were  splendid  acts  of  folly,  of  anachronism,  even 
crime.  They  were  '  magnificent,  but  not  war  '  -  -  in  any 
rational  sense.  It  was  Europe  that  had  to  be  protected 
against  the  Moslem  —  not  Asia  or  Africa  that  was  to  be 
conquered.  All  through  the  thirteenth  century  European 
civilisation  was  enjoying  the  vast  material  and  intellectual 
results  of  the  Crusades  of  the  twelfth  century.  But  to  sail 
for  Jerusalem,  Egypt,  or  Tunis,  had  then  become,  as  the  wise 
Joinville  told  St.  Louis,  a  cruel  neglect  of  duty  at  home. 

It  was  not  merely  in  the  exhaustion  of  the  Crusading 
zeal  that  the  waning  of  the  Catholic  fervour  was  shown. 
In  the  twelfth  century  there  had  been  learned  or  ingenious 
heretics.  But  the  mark  of  the  thirteenth  century  is  the 
rise  of  heretic  sects,  schismatic  churches,  religious  refor- 
mations, spreading  deep  down  amongst  the  roots  of  the 
people.  We  have  the  three  distinct  religious  movements 
which  began  to  sap  the  orthodox  citadel,  and  which  after- 
wards took  such  vast  proportions  —  Puritanism,  Mysticism, 
Scepticism.  All  of  them  take  form  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury —  Waldenses,  Albigenses,  Petrobussians,  Poor  Men, 
Anti-Ritualists,  Anti-Sacerdotalists,  Manichasans,  Gospel 
Christians,  Quietists,  Flagellants,  Pastoureaux,  fanatics  of 
all  orders.  All  through  the  thirteenth  century  we  have  an 
intense  ferment  of  the  religious  exaltation,  culminating  in 
the  orthodox  mysticism,  the  rivalries,  the  missions,  the 
revivalism,  of  the  new  allies  of  the  Church,  the  Franciscans 
and  Dominicans,  the  Friars  or  Mendicant  Orders. 

The  thirteenth  century  saw  the  romantic  rise,  the  mar- 
vellous growth,  and  then  the  inevitable  decay  of  the  Friars, 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  153 

the  two  orders  whose  careers  form  one  of  the  most  fas- 
cinating and  impressive  stories  in  modern  history.  The 
Franciscans,  or  Grey  Friars,  founded  in  1212,  the  Domini- 
cans, or  Black  Friars,  founded  in  1216,  by  the  middle  of 
the  century  had  infused  new  life  throughout  the  Catholic 
world.  By  the  end  of  the  century  their  power  was  spent, 
and  they  had  begun  to  be  absorbed  in  the  general  life  of 
the  Church.  It  was  one  of  the  great  rallies  of  the  Papal 
Church,  perhaps  of  all  the  rallies  the  most  important,  cer- 
tainly the  most  brilliant,  most  pathetic,  most  fascinating, 
the  most  rich  in  poetry,  in  art,  in  devotion.  For  the  me- 
diaeval Church  of  Rome,  like  the  Empire  of  the  Caesars  at 
Rome,  like  the  Eastern  Empire  of  Constantinople,  like  the 
Empire  of  the  Khalifs,  which  succeeded  that,  seems  to 
subsist  for  centuries  after  its  epoch  of  zenith  by  a  long 
series  of  rallies,  revivals,  and  new  births  out  of  almost 
hopeless  disorganisation  and  decay. 

But  the  thirteenth  century  is  not  less  memorable  for 
its  political  than  for  its  spiritual  history.  And  in  this 
field  the  history  is  that  of  new  organisations,  not. the  dis- 
solution of  the  old.  The  thirteenth  century  gave  Europe 
the  nations  as  we  now  know  them.  France,  England, 
Spain,  large  parts  of  North  and  South  Germany,  became 
nations,  where  they  were  previously  counties,  duchies,  and 
fiefs.  Compare  the  map  of  Europe  at  the  end  of  the 
twelfth  century,  when  Philip  Augustus  was  struggling 
with  Richard  i.,  when  the  King  of  England  was  a  more 
powerful  ruler  in  France  than  the  so-called  King  of 
France  in  Paris,  when  Spain  was  held  by  various  groups 
of  petty  kinglets  facing  the  solid  power  of  the  Moors, 
compare  this  with  the  map  of  Europe  at  the  end  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  with  Spain  constituted  a  kingdom  under 
Ferdinand  in.  and  Alfonso  x.,  France  under  Philip  the 
Fair,  and  England  under  Edward  i. 


154  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

At  the  very  opening  of  the  thirteenth  century  John  did 
England  the  inestimable  service  of  losing  her  French 
possessions.  At  the  close  of  the  century  the  greatest  of 
the  Plantagenets  finally  annexed  Wales  to  England  and 
began  the  incorporation  of  Scotland  and  Ireland.  Of  the 
creators  of  England  as  a  sovereign  power  in  the  world, 
from  Alfred  to  Chatham,  between  the  names  of  the  Con- 
queror and  Cromwell,  assuredly  that  of  Edward  i.  is  the 
most  important.  As  to  France,  the  petty  counties  which 
Philip  Augustus  inherited  in  1180  had  become,  in  the 
days  of  Philip  the  Fair  (1286-1314),  the  most  powerful 
nation  in  Europe.  As  a  great  European  force,  the  French 
nation  dates  from  the  age  of  Philip  Augustus,  Blanche  of 
Castile,  her  son  Louis  ix.  (the  Saint),  and  the  two  Philips 
(iii.  and  iv.),  the  son  and  grandson  of  St.  Louis.  The 
monarchy  of  France  was  indeed  created  in  the  thirteenth 
century.  All  that  went  before  was  preparation  :  all  that 
came  afterwards  was  development.  Almost  as  much  may 
be  said  for  England  and  for  Spain. 

It  was  an  age  of  great  rulers.  Indeed,  we  may  doubt 
if  any  hundred  years  of  European  history  has  been  so 
crowded  with  great  statesmen  and  kings.  In  England, 
Stephen  Langton  and  the  authors  of  our  Great  Charter 
in  1215;  William,  Earl  Mareschal,  Simon  de  Montfort,  Earl 
of  Leicester,  and  above  all  Edward  i.,  great  as  soldier,  as 
ruler,  as  legislator  —  as  great  when  he  yielded  as  when  he 
compelled.  In  France,  Philip  Augustus,  a  king  curiously 
like  our  Edward  i.  in  his  virtues  as  in  his  faults,  though 
earlier  by  three  generations  ;  Blanche,  his  son's  wife,  Re- 
gent of  France  ;  St.  Louis,  her  son  ;  and  St.  Louis'  grand- 
son, the  terrible,  fierce,  subtle,  and  adroit  Philip  the  Fair. 
Then  on  the  throne  of  the  Empire,  from  1220  to  1250, 
Frederick  n.,  '  the  world's  wonder,'  one  of  the  most  bril- 
liant characters  of  the  Middle  Ages,  whose  life  is  a  long 


A  SURVEY  OF  THE  THIRTEENTH  CENTURY.     155 

romance,  whose  many-sided  endowments  seemed  to  promise 
everything  but  real  greatness  and  abiding  results.  Next, 
after  a  generation,  his  successor,  less  brilliant  but  far  more 
truly  great,  Rudolph  of  Hapsburg,  emperor  from  1273  to 
1291,  the  founder  of  the  Austrian  dynasty,  the  ancestor 
of  its  sovereigns,  the  parallel,  I  had  almost  said  the  equal, 
of  our  own  Edward  i.  In  Spain,  Ferdinand  in.  and  his 
son,  Alfonso  x.,  whose  reigns  united  gave  Spain  peace  and 
prosperity  for  fifty-four  years  (1230-1284). 

How  comes  it  that  in  this  epoch  lands  so  different  as 
Italy,  Spain,  France,  England,  and  Germany,  produce 
rulers  who,  in  all  essentials  as  statesmen,  are  so  closely 
parallel  in  act,  whilst  widely  different  in  character  ?  Fred- 
erick ii.,  in  nature,  seems  the  antithesis  of  St.  Louis,  so 
does  Philip  Augustus  of  Ferdinand  in.,  our  cultured 
Edward  i.  of  his  martial  contemporary,  Rudolph  of  Haps- 
burg. Yet  these  men,  differing  so  entirely  in  nature  and 
in  gifts,  ruling  men  so  different  as  those  of  Sicily  and 
Austria,  Castile  and  England,  all  exercise  the  same  func- 
tions in  the  same  way  :  all  are  great  generals,  adminis- 
trators, legislators,  statesmen,  founders  of  nations,  authors 
of  constitutions,  supporters  of  the  Church,  promoters  of 
learning.  Clearly  it  is  that  their  time  is  the  golden  age 
of  kings,  an  age  when  the  social  conditions  forced  forth 
all  the  manhood  and  the  genius  of  the  born  ruler ;  when 
the  ruled  were  by  habit,  religion,  and  by  necessity  eager 
to  welcome  the  great  king  and  cheerfully  helped  him  in 
his  task.  Of  them  all,  St.  Louis  is  certainly  the  most 
beautiful  nature,  Frederick  n.  the  most  interesting  person- 
ality, our  Simon  de  Montfort  the  most  genuine  patriot, 
our  own  Edward  i.  the  most  creative  mind,  and  he  and 
Philip  Augustus  the  kings  whose  work  was  the  most  preg- 
nant with  permanent  results  ;  but  we  may  find  in  a  much 
ruder  nature,  in  Rudolph  of  Hapsburg,  the  simple,  un- 


156  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

wearied  warrior  chief,  who  finally  turned  the  German 
kings  from  Italy  to  the  North,  who  never  quarrelled  with 
the  Church,  who  so  sternly  asserted  the  arm  of  law,  and 
whose  whole  life  was  an  unbroken  series  of  well-won 
triumphs  —  the  most  truly  typical  king  of  the  thirteenth 
century.  Frederick  n.  and  Edward  i.  are  really  in  advance 
of  their  age ;  and  St.  Louis  and  Ferdinand  in.  are  saints 
and  churchmen  more  than  kings. 

Together  with  the  kings  must  be  kept  always  in  view 
the  base  on  which  the  power  of  the  kings  was  founded  — 
the  growing  greatness  of  the  towns.  There  were  two 
allied  forces  which  divided  the  inheritance  of  Feudalism 
—  the  monarchs  on  the  one  hand,  the  burghers  on  the 
other.  The  thirteenth  century  is  eminently  the  era  of 
the  foundation  of  the  great  towns  north  of  the  Alps.  In 
France,  in  Spain,  in  England,  in  Burgundy,  in  Flanders, 
and  even  we  may  say  in  Germany,  the  princes  never 
became  strong  but  by  alliance  with  the  wealth,  the  intelli- 
gence, the  energy,  of  the  cities.  To  the  burghers  the 
kings  represented  civilisation,  internal  peace,  good  gov- 
ernment :  to  the  kings  the  towns  represented  the  sinews 
of  war,  the  material  and  intellectual  sources  of  their  splen- 
dour, of  their  armies,  their  civil  organisation.  Hence,  in 
the  thirteenth  century,  there  grew  in  greatness,  side  by 
side  and  in  friendly  alliance,  the  two  powers  which,  in  later 
centuries,  have  fought  out  such  obstinate  battles — the 
monarchies  and  the  people.  And  out  of  this  alliance,  at 
once  its  condition  and  its  instrument,  there  grew  up 
Cortes,  Diets,  States-General,  Parliaments,  Charters,  con- 
stitutional laws,  codes,  and  ordinances. 

It  is  true  that  in  Italy,  Spain,  Provence,  and  Languedoc, 
we  find  rich  trading  towns  as  early  as  the  First  Crusade, 
but  it  was  not  until  the  thirteenth  century  that  we  can 
call  any  northern  city  an  independent  power,  with  a  large, 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  I5/ 

wealthy,  and  proud  population,  a  municipal  life  of  its  own, 
and  a  widely  extended  commerce.  By  the  end  of  the 
thirteenth  century  Europe  is  covered  with  such  towns  — 
Paris,  London,  Strasburg,  Cologne,  Ghent,  Rouen,  Bor- 
deaux, in  the  first  line,  the  great  wool  cities  of  East  Eng- 
land, the  ports  of  the  South  and  West,  the  great  river 
cities  of  France  along  the  Loire,  the  Rhone,  the  Garonne, 
the  Seine,  the  rich,  artistic,  laborious,  and  crowded  cities 
of  Flanders,  the  rich  and  powerful  cities  on  the  Rhine 
from  Basle  down  to  Arnheim,  the  cities  of  the  Danube, 
•the  Elbe,  and  the  Baltic.  This  is  the  age  of  the  great 
confederation  of  the  Rhine,  and  the  rise  of  the  Hanseatic 
League  ;  for  in  Germany  and  in  Flanders,  where  the  towns 
could  not  count  on  the  protection  of  a  friendly  and  central 
monarchy,  the  towns  formed  mutual  leagues  for  protec- 
tion and  support  amongst  themselves.  It  would  need  a 
volume  to  work  out  this  complex  development.  But  we 
may  take  it  that,  for  Northern  Europe,  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury is  the  era  of  the  definite  establishment  of  rich,  free, 
self-governing  municipalities.  It  is  the  flourishing  era  of 
town  charters,  of  city  leagues,  and  of  the  systematic  estab- 
lishment of  a  European  commerce,  north  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean, both  inter-provincial  and  inter-national.  And  out 
of  these  rich  and  teeming  cities  arose  that  social  power 
destined  to  such  a  striking  career  in  the  next  six  centuries 
—  the  middle  class,  a  new  order  in  the  State,  whose 
importance  rests  on  wealth,  intelligence,  and  organisation, 
not  on  birth  or  on  arms.  And  out  of  that  middle  class 
rose  popular  representation,  election  by  the  commons,  i.e., 
by  communes,  or  corporate  constituencies,  the  third  es- 
tate. The  history  of  popular  representation  in  Europe 
would  occupy  a  volume,  or  many  volumes  :  its  conception, 
birth,  and  youth  fall  within  the  thirteenth  century. 

The  Great  Charter,  which  the  barons,  as  real  represen- 


158  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

tatives  of  the  whole  nation,  wrested  from  John  in  1215, 
did  not,  it  is  true,  contain  any  scheme  of  popular  represen- 
tation ;  but  it  asserted  the  principle,  and  it  laid  down 
canons  of  public  law  which  led  directly  to  popular  repre- 
sentation and  a  parliamentary  constitution.  The  Great 
Charter  has  been  talked  about  for  many  centuries  in  vague 
superlatives  of  praise,  by  those  who  had  little  precise  or 
accurate  knowledge  of  it.  But  now  that  our  knowledge  of 
it  is  full  and  exact,  we  see  that  its  importance  was  in  no 
way  exaggerated,  and  perhaps  was  hardly  understood  ; 
and  we  find  it  hard  adequately  to  express  our  admiration 
of  its  wise,  just,  and  momentous  policy.  The  Great 
Charter  of  1215  led  in  a  direct  line  to  the  complete  and 
developed  Parliament  of  1295.  And  Bishop  Stubbs  has 
well  named  the  interval  between  the  two,  the  eighty  years 
of  struggle  for  a  political  constitution.  The  Charter  of  John 
contains  the  principle  of  taxation  through  the  common 
council  of  the  realm.  From  the  very  first  year  after  it 
representative  councils  appear  ;  first  from  counties  ;  then, 
in  1254,  we  have  a  regular  Parliament  from  shires;  in 
1264,  after  the  battle  of  Lewes,  Simon  de  Montfort,  Earl 
of  Leicester,  summoned  two  discreet  representatives  from 
towns  and  cities  by  writ  ;  in  1273,  Edward  i.  summoned 
what  was  in  effect  a  Parliament  ;  and,  after  several  Parlia- 
ments summoned  in  intervening  years,  we  have  the  first 
complete  and  finally  constituted  Parliament  in  1295. 

But  our  own,  the  greatest  and  most  permanent  of  Par- 
liaments, was  by  no  means  the  earliest.  Representatives 
of  cities  and  boroughs  had  come  to  the  Cortes  of  Castile 
and  of  Arragon  in  the  twelfth  century  ;  early  in  the  thir- 
teenth century  Frederick  n.  summoned  them  to  general 
courts  in  Sicily  ;  in  the  middle  of  the  century  the  towns 
sent  deputies  to  the  German  Diets  ;  in  1277,  the  commons 
and  towns  swear  fealty  to  Rudolph  of  Hapsburg;  in  1291, 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  159 

was  founded  in  the  mountains  of  Schwytz  that  Swiss  con- 
federation which  has  just  celebrated  its  6ooth  anniversary  ; 
and,  in  1302,  Philip  the  Fair  summoned  the  States-General 
to  back  him  in  his  desperate  duel  with  Boniface  vin. 
Thus,  seven  years  after  Edward  i.  had  called  to  West- 
minster that  first  true  Parliament  which  has  had  there  so 
great  a  history  over  600  years,  Philip  called  together  to 
Notre  Dame  at  Paris  the  three  estates  —  the  clergy,  the 
baronage,  and  the  commons.  So  clear  is  it  that  the  thir- 
teenth century  called  into  being  that  momentous  element 
of  modern  civilisation,  the  representation  of  the  people 
in  Parliament. 

Side  by  side  with  Parliaments  there  grew  up  the  power 
of  the  law  courts  :  along  with  constitutions,  civil  jurispru- 
dence. Our  Edward  i.  is  often  called,  and  called  truly,  the 
English  Justinian.  The  authority  of  the  decisions  of  the 
courts,  the  development  of  law  by  direct  legislation  —  i.e., 
case-law  as  we  know  it,  legislative  amendment  of  the  law  as 
we  know  it  —  first  begin  with  the  reign  of  Edward  i.  From 
that  date  to  this  hour  we  have  an  unbroken  sequence  of  de- 
velopment in  our  judicial,  as  much  as  in  our  parliamentary, 
history.  An  even  more  momentous  transformation  of  law 
took  place  throughout  France.  There  the  kings  created 
the  powerful  order  of  the  jurists,  and  ruled  at  home  and 
abroad  through  them.  In  the  legislation  of  Philip  Augus- 
tus, the  translation  under  him  of  the  Corpus  Juris  into 
French,  the  famous  Etablisscments  of  St.  Louis,  at  the 
middle  of  the  century,  the  growing  importance  of  the  Parle- 
ments,  or  judicial  councils,  under  Philip  the  Fair  at  the  end 
of  the  century,  we  have  the  first  resurrection  of  the  Roman 
civil  law  to  fight  out  its  long  contest  with  the  feudal  law, 
which  has  led  to  its  ultimate  supremacy  in  the  Civil  Codeoi 
our  day. 

These,  however,  are  but  the  external  facts  forming  the 


I6O  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

framework  within  which  the  moral  and  intellectual  ferment 
of  the  thirteenth  century  moved  and  worked  ;  and  in  group- 
ing in  a  few  paragraphs  the  well-known  outlines  of  the  po- 
litical events  of  that  age  we  are  merely  tracing  the  skeleton 
of  the  living  forces  of  the  time.  In  many  ways  the  thir- 
teenth century  created  by  anticipation  much  of  the  Renas- 
cence that  we  associate  with  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries.  It  was  a  revival  or  new  era,  deeper,  purer,  more 
constructive  than  the  latter  movement,  which  we  commonly 
speak  of  as  Renaissance.  This  superfluous  Gallicism  is  a 
term  which  we  should  do  well  to  drop  ;  for  it  suggests  a  na- 
tional character  to  a  European  movement ;  it  implies  a  new 
birth,  in  the  spirit  of  mendacious  vanity,  so  characteristic  of 
the  age  of  Cellinis  and  Aretinos ;  and  it  expresses  the  nega- 
tive side  of  what  was  largely  a  mere  evolution  of  the  past. 
As  a  creative  movement,  the  profound  uprising  of  intellect 
and  soul  concentrated  in  Dante  was  a  far  nobler  and  more 
potent  effort  than  any  form  of  classical  revival.  The  move- 
ment we  associate  with  the  epoch  of  Leo  x.,  of  Francis  i., 
and  Charles  v.  was  only  one  of  the  series  of  European 
efforts  to  realise  a  more  complete  type  of  moral  and  social 
life  ;  and  of  them  all  it  was  the  one  most  deeply  tainted 
with  the  spirit  of  vanity,  of  impurity,  and  of  anarchy.  Of 
all  the  epochs  of  effort  after  a  new  life,  that  of  the  age  of 
Aquinas,  Roger  Bacon,  St.  Francis,  St.  Louis,  Giotto,  and 
Dante  is  the  most  purely  spiritual,  the  most  really  construc- 
tive, and  indeed  the  most  truly  philosophic. 

Between  the  epoch  of  Charlemagne  and  the  revolution- 
ary reconstruction  of  the  present  century  we  may  count  at 
least  four  marked  periods  of  concerted  effort  in  Western 
Europe  to  found  a  broader  and  higher  type  of  society. 
European  civilisation  advances,  no  doubt,  in  a  way  which  is 
most  irregular,  and  yet  in  the  long  run  continuous.  But 
we  may  still  trace  very  distinct  periods  of  special  activity 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  l6l 

and  common  upheaval.  One  of  these  periods  is  the  age  of 
Hildebrand,  the  great  Norman  chiefs,  Lanfranc,  Anselm, 
and  the  first  Crusade.  The  second  period  is  that  which 
opens  with  Innocent  in.  and  closes  with  Dante.  The  third 
is  the  classical  revival  from  Louis  xi.  to  Charles  v.  The 
fourth  is  the  philosophic  and  scientific  movement  of  the  age 
of  Voltaire,  Diderot,  and  Hume,  which  preceded  the  great 
revolutionary  wars.  The  first  two  movements,  in  the  golden 
age  of  Popes  and  Crusades,  were  sincere  attempts  to  reform 
society  on  a'  Catholic  and  Feudal  basis.  They  did  not  suc- 
ceed, but  they  were  both  inspired  with  great  and  beautiful 
ideals.  And  the  movement  of  the  thirteenth  century  was 
more  humane,  more  intellectual,  more  artistic,  more  origi- 
nal, and  more  poetic  than  that  of  the  eleventh  century.  The 
so-called  Renaissance,  or  Humanistic  Revival,  was  a  time  of 
extraordinary  brilliancy  and  energy ;  but  it  was  avowedly 
based  on  insurrection  and  destruction,  and  it  was  an  utterly 
premature  attempt  to  found  an  intellectual  humanism  with- 
out either  real  humanity  or  sound  scientific  knowledge. 
And  the  age  of  Voltaire,  though  it  had  both  humanity 
and  science,  was  even  more  destructive  in  its  aim  ;  for  it 
erected  negation  into  its  own  creed,  and  proposed  to  regen- 
erate mJfnkind  by  '  stamping  out  the  infamy '  (of  religion). 
It  follows  then  that,  if  we  are  to  select  any  special  period 
for  the  birth  of  a  regenerate  and  developed  modern  society, 
we  may  take  the  age  of  Dante,  1265-1321,  as  that  which 
witnessed  the  mighty  transformation  from  a  world  which 
still  trusted  in  the  faith  of  a  Catholic  and  Feudal  consti- 
tution of  society  to  a  world  which  was  teeming  with  ideas 
and  wants  incompatible  with  Catholic  or  Feudal  systems 
altogether.  The  whole  thirteenth  century  was  crowded 
with  creative  forces  in  philosophy,  art,  poetry,  and  states- 
manship as  rich  as  those  of  the  Humanist  Renaissance. 
And  if  we  are  accustomed  to  look  on  them  as  so  much 
L 


1 62  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

more  limited  and  rude,  it  is  because  we  forget  how  very 
few  and  poor  were  their  resources  and  their  instruments. 
In  creative  genius,  Giotto  is  the  peer,  if  not  the  superior, 
of  Raphael.  Dante  had  all  the  qualities  of  his  three  chief 
successors  —  and  very  much  more  besides.  It  is  a  tenable 
view  that,  in  pure  inventive  fertility  and  in  imaginative 
range,  those  vast  composite  creations  —  the  cathedrals  of 
the  thirteenth  century  —  in  all  their  wealth  of  architecture, 
statuary,  painted  glass,  enamels,  embroideries,  and  inex- 
haustible decorative  work,  may  be  set  beside"  the  entire 
painting  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Albert  and  Aquinas,  in 
philosophic  range,  had  no  peer  until  we  come  down  to  Des- 
cartes. Nor  was  Roger  Bacon  surpassed  in  versatile  au- 
dacity of  genius  and  in  true  encyclopaedic  grasp,  by  any 
thinker  between  him  and  his  namesake,  the  Chancellor. 
In  statesmanship,  and  all  the  qualities  of  the  born  leader  of 
men,  we  can  only  match  the  great  chiefs  of  the  thirteenth 
century  by  comparing  them  with  the  greatest  names  three 
or  even  four  centuries  later. 

The  thirteenth  century  was  indeed  an  abortive  revival. 
It  was  a  failure  :  but  a  splendid  failure.  Men  as  great  as 
any  the  world  has  known  in  thought,  in  art,  in  action,  pro- 
foundly believed  that  society  could  be  permanently  organ- 
ised on  Catholic  and  Feudal  lines.  It  was  an  illusion  ;  but 
it  was  neither  an  unworthy  nor  an  inexcusable  illusion  ;  for 
there  were  great  resources,  both  in  Catholic  and  in  Feudal 
powers.  And  it  was  not  possible  for  the  greatest  minds, 
after  the  thousand  years  of  interval  which  had  covered 
Europe  since  the  age  of  the  Antonines,  to  understand  how 
vast  were  the  defects  of  their  own  age  in  knowledge,  in 
the  arts  of  life,  and  in  social  organisation.  They  had  no 
ancient  world,  or  what  we  call  to-day,  the  Revival  of  Learn- 
ing ;  they  had  no  real  science ;  and  even  the  ordinary 
commonplaces  of  every  Greek  and  Roman  were  to  them  a 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  163 

profound  mystery.  What  was  even  worse,  they  did  not 
know  how  much  they  needed  to  know  :  they  had  no  meas- 
ure of  their  own  ignorance.  And  thus  even  intellects  like 
those  of  Albert,  Aquinas,  and  Dante  could  still  dream  of  a 
final  co-ordination  of  human  knowledge  on  the  lines  of  some 
subjective  recasting  of  the  Catholic  verities.  And  they 
naturally  imagined  that,  after  all,  society  could  be  saved 
by  some  regeneration  of  the  Church  — though  we  now  see 
that  this  was  far  less  possible  than  to  expect  Pope  Boniface 
eventually  to  turn  out  a  saint,  like  Bernard  of  Clairvaux  or 
Francis  of  Assisi. 

And  just  as  the  men  of  intellect  still  believed  that  it 
was  possible  to  recast  the  Catholic  scheme,  so  men  of 
action  still  believed  it  possible  to  govern  nations  on  the 
Feudal  scheme,  and  with  the  help  of  the  feudal  magnates. 
For  a  time  all  through  the  thirteenth  century,  men  of  very 
noble  character  or  of  commanding  genius  did  manage  to 
govern  in  this  way,  by  the  help  first  of  the  churchmen, 
then  of  the  growing  townships,  and  by  constantly  ex- 
hausting their  own  barons  in  foreign  expeditions.  Philip 
Augustus,  Blanche,  St.  Louis,  and  Philip  the  Fair  held 
their  own  by  a  combination  of  high  qualities  and  fortunate 
conditions.  In  England  the  infamous  John  and  his  foolish 
son  forced  the  feudal  chiefs  to  become  statesmen  them- 
selves. Edward  i.,  Rudolph  of  Hapsburg,  Albert  of  Aus- 
tria, Henry  of  Luxembourg,  succeeded  in  marshalling  their 
fierce  baronial  squadrons.  But  it  could  only  be  done  by 
extraordinary  skill  and  fortune,  and  even  then  but  for  a 
short  time.  After  them,  for  nearly  two  hundred  years, 
Europe  was  delivered  over  to  an  orgie  of  feudal  anarchy. 
The  dreadful  Hundred  Years'  War  between  France  and 
England,  the  wars  of  succession,  the  Wars  of  the  Roses, 
the  dismemberment  of  France,  the  confusion  of  Spain,  the 
decadence  of  the  Empire  ensued. 


164  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

Thus  the  political  history  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
centuries  is  a  record  of  bloodshed  and  anarchy,  until  men 
like  the  grim  Louis  XL,  Ferdinand  v.  and  Charles  v.,  and 
the  Tudors  in  England  finally  succeeded  in  mastering 
Feudalism  by  the  aid  of  the  middle  classes  and  middle- 
class  statesmen.  But,  as  neither  middle  class  nor  middle- 
class  statesmen  existed  in  the  thirteenth  century,  the  kings 
were  forced  to  do  the  best  they  could  with  their  feudal 
resources.  What  they  did  was  often  very  good,  and  some- 
times truly  wonderful.  It  could  not  permanently  suc- 
ceed ;  but  its  very  failure  was  a  grand  experiment.  And 
thus,  whether  in  the  spiritual  and  intellectual  world,  or  in 
the  political  and  social  world,  the  thirteenth  century  —  the 
last  great  effort  of  the  Middle  Ages — was  doomed  to  in- 
evitable disappointment,  because  the  preceding  thousand 
years  of  history  had  deprived  it  of  the  only  means  by 
which  success  was  possible. 

The  unmistakable  sign  that  the  real  force  of  Catholi- 
cism was  exhausted  may  be  read  in  the  transfer  of  the 
intellectual  leadership  from  the  monasteries  to  the  schools, 
from  the  churchmen  to  the  doctors.  And  this  transfer 
was  thoroughly  effected  in  the  thirteenth  century.  In  the 
eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  the  spiritual  and  philo- 
sophic guidance  of  mankind  was  in  the  hands  of  true 
monks.  Clugny,  Clairvaux,  St.  Denis,  Bee,  Canterbury, 
Merton,  Malmesbury,  Glastonbury,  and  Croyland  sent 
out  teachers  and  rulers.  St.  Bernard  managed  to  silence 
Abailard.  But  in  the  thirteenth  century  it  is  not  the 
monasteries  but  the  universities  that  hold  up  the  torch. 
Paris,  Oxford,  Montpellier,  and  the  like  were  wholly  secu- 
lar schools ;  for  though  the  leading  doctors  and  profes- 
sors of  this  age  are  still  nominally  churchmen,  and  even 
monks,  their  whole  moral  and  mental  attitude,  and  the 
atmosphere  of  their  schools,  are  strictly  secular,  and  not 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  1 65 

monastic.  Within  two  generations  the  Dominican  and 
Franciscan  houses,  founded  at  the  beginning  of  the  cen- 
tury in  such  a  whirlwind  of  ecstatic  devotion,  became 
celebrated  schools  of  learning  and  secular  education,  so 
that  Aquinas  has  almost  as  little  of  the  missionary  passion 
of  St.  Dominic  as  Roger  Bacon  has  of  the  mystic  tender- 
ness of  St.  Francis.  It  is  a  fact  of  deep  significance  that, 
within  a  generation  of  the  foundation  of  the  Mendicant 
Orders,  the  Descartes  and  the  Bacon  of  the  thirteenth 
century  were  both  on  the  roll  of  the  Friars.  So  rapidly 
did  mystic  theology  tend  to  develop  into  free  inquiry.  It 
would  be  hard  to  find  anything  more  utterly  unlike  the 
saintly  ideal  of  monasticism  than  were  Paris  and  Oxford 
at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century.  Its  whole  intellect- 
ual character  may  be  measured  by  the  light  of  these  two 
famous  seminaries  of  the  new  thought. 

It  was  the  great  age  of  the  schools  we  call  universities, 
for  though  those  of  Italy  belong  to  an  earlier  age,  the 
thirteenth  century  gave  full  stature  to  the  universities  of 
Paris,  and  of  Oxford,  of  Orleans,  Toulouse,  and  Montpel- 
lier,  of  Cordova,  Seville,  and  Toledo.  That  of  Paris  re- 
ceived from  Philip  Augustus  in  1215  (the  year  of  our 
Great  Charter)  her  formal  constitution,  and  all  through 
the  thirteenth  century  her  'nations'  of  twenty  thousand 
students  formed  the  main  intellectual  centre  of  Europe. 
The  University  of  Oxford  was  hardly  second  to  that  of 
Paris  ;  and  though  the  history  of  the  Oxford  schools  is  in 
its  origin  obscure,  and  even  local,  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury we  can  trace  the  definite  constitution  of  the  uni- 
versity and  the  momentous  foundation  of  the  colleges, 
when  Walter  de  Merton,  in  the  reign  of  Edward  i.,  gave 
statutes  to  Merton  College.  Thus  the  origin  of  our  great 
English  university  is  almost  exactly  coeval  with  the  origin 
of  our  Eno-Hsh  Parliament. 


l66  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

The  same  age  also  witnessed  the  revival  of  rational  phi- 
losophy after  its  long  sleep  of  a  thousand  years.  Intel- 
lects quite  as  powerful  as  those  of  the  Greek  thinkers  took 
up  the  task  of  constructing  a  harmony  of  general  ideas  on 
the  ground  where  it  had  been  left  by  the  Alexandrine  suc- 
cessors of  Aristotle  and  Plato.  The  best  teachers  of  the 
thirteenth  century  had  conceptions  and  aims  very  far 
broader  and  more  real  than  those  of  Abailard,  of  William 
of  Champeaux,  or  John  of  Salisbury  in  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury, who  were  little  more  than  theological  logicians.  The 
thirteenth  century  had  an  instrument  of  its  own,  at  least 
as  important  to  human  progress  as  the  classical  revival  of 
the  fifteenth  century.  This  was  the  recovery  in  sub- 
stance of  the  works  of  Aristotle.  By  the  middle  of  the 
thirteenth  century  the  entire  works  of  Aristotle  were 
more  or  less  sufficiently  known.  For  the  most  part  they 
were  translated  from  the  Arabic,  where  they  had  lain  hid 
for  six  centuries,  like  papyri  discovered  in  an  Egyptian 
mummy  case.  They  were  made  known  by  Alexander 
Hales  at  Paris,  by  Albert  the  Great  and  Aquinas,  his 
pupil  and  successor.  Albert  of  Cologne,  the  '  Universal 
Doctor,'  as  they  called  him,  might  himself,  by  virtue  of 
his  encyclopaedic  method,  be  styled  the  Aristotle  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  as  St.  Bonaventura,  the  '  Seraphic 
Doctor,'  the  mystical  metaphysician,  may  be  called  the 
Plato  of  the  thirteenth  century.  Roger  Bacon,  the  Oxford 
Franciscan,  is  even  yet  but  imperfectly  known  to  us, 
though  he  is  often  compared,  not  unfavourably,  with  his 
famous  namesake,  the  author  of  the  Novum  Organum. 
But,  in  spite  of  the  amazing  ingenuity  of  the  founder  of 
natural  philosophy  in  modern  Europe,  we  can  hardly  hesi- 
tate to  place  above  all  his  contemporaries  —  the  '  Angelic 
Doctor,'  Thomas  Aquinas,  the  Descartes  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  and  beyond  doubt  the  greatest  philosophic  mind 
between  Aristotle  and  Descartes. 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  167 

Albert,  Roger,  Thomas,  combined,  as  did  Aristotle  and 
Descartes,  the  science  of  nature  with  the  philosophy  of 
thought ;  and,  though  we  look  back  to  the  Opus  Majns  of 
Roger  Bacon  with  wonder  and  admiration  for  his  marvel- 
lous anticipatory  guesses  of  modern  science,  we  cannot 
doubt  that  Aquinas  was  truly  the  mightier  intellect. 
Roger  Bacon  was,  indeed,  four  centuries  in  advance  of  his 
age  —  on  his  own  age  and  on  succeeding  ages  he  produced 
no  influence  at  all.  But  Aquinas  was  '  the  master  of  those 
who  know  '  for  all  Christian  thinkers  from  his  death,  in 
1274,  until  the  age  of  Francis  Bacon  and  Descartes. 
Roger  Bacon,  like  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  or  Giordano  Bruno, 
or  Spinoza,  belongs  to  the  order  of  intellectual  pioneers, 
who  are  too  much  in  advance  of  their  age  and  of  its  actual 
resources  to  promote  civilisation  as  they  might  do,  or  even 
to  make  the  most  of  their  own  extraordinary  powers. 

An  age  which  united  aspiring  intellect,  passionate  devo- 
tion, and  constructive  power,  naturally  created  a  new  type 
of  sacred  art.  The  pointed  architecture,  that  we  call 
Gothic,  had  its  rise,  its  development,  its  highest  splendour 
in  the  thirteenth  century,  to  which  we  owe  all  that  is  most 
lovely  in  the  churches  of  Chartres,  Amiens,  Reims,  Paris, 
Bourges,  Strasburg,  Cologne,  Burgos,  Toledo,  Westmin- 
ster, Salisbury,  and  Lincoln.  It  is  true  that  there  are 
some  traces  of  the  pointed  style  in  France  in  the  twelfth 
century,  at  St.  Denis,  at  Sens,  and  at  Laon  ;  but  the  true 
glories  of  this  noble  art  belong,  in  France,  to  the  reigns  of 
Philip  Augustus  and  of  St.  Louis  ;  in  England,  to  those  of 
Henry  in.  and  Edward  i.  In  these  two  countries  we  must 
seek  the  origin  of  this  wonderful  creation  of  human  art,  of 
which  Chartres,  Amiens,  and  Westminster  are  the  cen- 
tral examples.  These  glorious  fanes  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury were  far  more  than  works  of  art :  they  were  at  once 
temples,  national  monuments,  museums,  schools,  musical 


l68  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

academies,  and  parliament  halls,  where  the  whole  people 
gathered  to  be  trained  in  every  form  of  art,  in  all  kinds  of 
knowledge,  and  in  all  modes  of  intellectual  cultivation. 
They  were  the  outgrowth  of  the  whole  civilisation  of  their 
age,  in  a  manner  so  complete  and  intense,  that  its  like  was 
never  before  seen,  except  on  the  Acropolis  of  Athens,  in 
the  age  of  ^Eschylus  and  Pericles.  It  is  not  enough  to 
recall  the  names  of  the  master  masons  —  Robert  de  Lu- 
zarches,  Robert  de  Coucy,  Erwin  of  Steinbach,  and  Pierre 
de  Montereau.  These  vast  temples  are  the  creation  of 
generations  of  men  and  the  embodiment  of  entire  epochs  ; 
and  he  who  would  know  the  Middle  Ages  should  study  in 
detail  every  carved  figure,  every  painted  window,  each 
canopy,  each  relief,  each  portal  in  Amiens,  or  Chartres, 
Reims,  Bourges,  Lincoln,  or  Salisbury,  and  he  will  find 
revealed  to  him  more  than  he  can  read  'in  a  thousand 
books. 

Obviously  the  thirteenth  century  is  the  great  age  of 
architecture  —  the  branch  of  art  which  of  all  the  arts  of 
form  is  at  once  the  most  social,  the  most  comprehensive, 
and  the  most  historic.  Great  buildings  include  sculpture, 
painting,  and  all  the  decorative  arts  together ;  they  require 
the  co-operation  of  an  entire  people  ;  and  they  are,  in  a 
peculiar  manner,  characteristic  of  their  age.  The  special 
arts  of  form  are  more  associated  with  individual  genius. 
These,  as  was  natural,  belong  to  centuries  later  than  the 
thirteenth.  But,  even  in  the  thirteenth,  sculpture  gave 
us  the  peopled  portals  and  the  exquisite  canopies  of  our 
northern  cathedrals,  the  early  palaces  of  Venice,  and  the 
carvings  of  Nicolas  and  John  of  Pisa,  which  almost  antici- 
pate Ghiberti  and  Donatello.  And  in  painting,  Cimabue 
opens  in  this  century  the  long  roll  of  Italian  masters,  and 
Giotto  was  already  a  youth  of  glorious  promise,  before  the 
century  was  closed. 


A    SURVEY    OF    THE    THIRTEENTH    CENTURY.  169 

The  literature  of  the  thirteenth  century  does  not,  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  term,  stand  forth  with  such  special 
brilliancy  as  its  art,  its  thought,  and  its  political  activity. 
As  in  most  epochs  of  profound  stirring  of  new  ideas  and 
of  great  efforts  after  practical  objects,  the  energy  of  the 
age  was  not  devoted  to  the  composition  of  elaborate  works. 
It  was  natural  that  Dante  should  be  a  century  later  than 
Barbarossa  and  Innocent,  and  that  Petrarch  of  Vaucluse 
should  be  a  century  later  than  Francis  of  Assisi.  But 
the  thirteenth  century  was  amply  represented,  both  in 
poetry,  romance,  and  prose  history.  All  of  these  trace  their 
fountain-heads  to  an  earlier  age,  and  all  of  them  were  fully 
developed  in  a  later  age.  But  French  prose  may  be  said 
to  have  first  taken  form  in  the  chronicle  of  Villehardouin 
at  the  opening  of  the  century,  and  the  chronicle  of  Join- 
ville  at  its  close.  The  same  century  also  added  to  the 
Catholic  Hymnal  some  of  the  most  powerful  pieces  in  that 
glorious  Anthology  —  the  Dies  Ira,  the  Stabat  Mater,  the 
grand  hymns  of  Aquinas,  of  Bonaventura,  and  of  Thomas 
of  Celano.  It  produced  also  that  rich  repertory  of  devo- 
tional story,  the  Golden  Legend  of  Voragine.  It  was, 
moreover,  the  thirteenth  century  which  produced  the  main 
part  of  the  Roman  de  la  Rose,  the  favourite  reading  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  some  of  the  best  forms  of  the  Arthurian 
cycle,  Ruteboeuf  and  the  French  lyrists,  some  of  the  most 
brilliant  of  the  Troubadours,  Sordello,  Brunetto  Latini, 
Guido  Cavalcanti,  and  the  precursors  and  associates  of 
Dante. 

As  to  Dante  himself,  it  is  not  easy  to  place  him  in  a 
survey  of  the  thirteenth  century.  In  actual  date  and  in 
typical  expression  he  belongs  to  it,  and  yet  he  does  not 
belong  to  it.  The  century  itself  has  a  transitional,  an 
ambiguous  character.  And  Dante,  like  it,  has  a  transi- 
tional and  double  office.  He  is  the  poet,  the  prophet,  the 


I/O  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

painter  of  the  Middle  Ages.  And  yet,  in  so  many  things, 
he  anticipates  the  modern  mind  and  modern  art.  In  actual 
date,  the  last  year  of  the  thirteenth  century  is  the  '  middle 
term  '  of  the  poet's  life,  his  thirty-fifth  year.  Some  of  his 
most  exquisite  work  was  already  produced,  and  his  whole 
mind  was  grown  to  maturity.  On  the  other  hand,  every 
line  of  the  Divine  Comedy  was  actually  written  in  the  four- 
teenth century,  and  the  poet  lived  in  it  for  twenty  years. 
Nor  was  the  entire  vision  complete  until  near  the  poet's 
death  in  1321.  In  spirit,  in  design,  in  form,  this  great 
creation  has  throughout  this  double  character.  By  memory, 
by  inner  soul,  by  enthusiasm,  Dante  seems  to  dwell  with 
the  imperial  chiefs  of  Hohenstaufen,  with  Francis  and 
Dominic,  Bernard  and  Aquinas.  He  paints  the  Catholic 
and  Feudal  world  ;  he  seems  saturated  with  the  Catholic 
and  Feudal  sentiment.  And  yet  he  deals  with  popes, 
bishops,  Church,  and  conclaves  with  the  audacious  intel- 
lectual freedom  of  a  Paris  dialectician  or  an  Oxford  doctor. 
Between  the  lines  of  the  great  Catholic  poem  we  can  read 
the  death-sentence  of  Catholic  Church  and  Feudal  hie- 
rarchy. Like  all  great  artists,  Dante  paints  a  world  which 
only  subsisted  in  ideal  and  in  memory,  just  as  Spenser  and 
Shakespeare  transfigured  in  their  verse  a  humanistic 
and  romantic  society  such  as  had  long  disappeared  from 
the  region  of  fact.  And  for  this  reason,  and  for  others,  it 
were  better  to  regard  the  sublime  Dies  Ir&,  which  the 
Florentine  wanderer  chanted  in  his  latter  years  over  the 
grave  of  the  Middle  Ages,  as  belonging  in  its  inner  spirit 
to  a  later  time,  and  as  being  in  reality  the  dawn  of  modern 
poetry. 

In  Dante,  as  in  Giotto,  in  Frederick  n.,  in  Edward  i., 
in  Roger  Bacon,  we  may  hear  the  trumpet  which  sum- 
moned the  Middle  Ages  into  the  modern  world.  The  true 
spirits  of  the  thirteenth  century,  still  Catholic  and  Feudal, 


A  SURVEY  OF  THE  THIRTEENTH  CENTURY.      I /I 

are  Innocent  m.,  St.  Francis,  Stephen  Langton,  Gros- 
setete,  Aquinas,  Bonaventura,  and  Albert  of  Cologne ; 
Philip  Augustus,  St.  Louis,  the  Barons  of  Runnymede, 
and  Simon  de  Montfort ;  the  authors  of  the  Golden 
Legend  and  the  Catholic  Hymns,  the  Doctors  of  Paris, 
Oxford,  and  Bologna ;  the  builders  of  Amiens,  Notre 
Dame,  Lincoln,  and  Westminster. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

WHAT   THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1789   DID.1 

'  '  Tout  ce  que  je  vois,  jette  les  semences  d'une  revolution  qui  arrivera  imman- 
quablement.  .  .  .  Les  Francais  arrivent  tard  a  tout,  mais  enfin  ils  arrivent. 
.  .  .  Alors,  ce  sera  un  beau  tapage.  Les  jeunes  gens  sont  bien  heureux;  ils 
verront  de  belles  choses.'  —  VOLTAIRE. 

THE  movement  known  as  the  Revolution  of  1789  was 
a  transformation  —  not  a  convulsion;  it  was  constructive 
even  more  than  destructive  ;  and  if  it  was  in  outward 
manifestation  a  chaotic  revolution,  in  its  inner  spirit  it  was 
an  organic  evolution.  It  was  a  movement  in  no  sense 
local,  accidental,  temporary,  or  partial ;  it  was  not  simply, 
nor  even  mainly,  a  political  movement.  It  was  an  intel- 
lectual and  religious,  a  moral,  social,  and  economic  move- 
ment, before  it  was  a  political  movement,  and  even  more 
than  it  was  a  political  movement. 

If  it  is  French  in  form,  it  is  European  in  essence.  It 
belongs  to  modern  history  as  a  whole  quite  as  much  as  to 
the  eighteenth  century  in  France.  Its  germs  began  cen- 
turies earlier  than  the  generation  of  1789,  and  its  activity 
will  long  outlast  the  generation  of  1889.  It  is  not  an 
episode  of  frenzy  in  the  life  of  a  single  nation.  In  all  its 
deeper  elements  it  is  a  condensation  of  the  history  of  man- 
kind, a  repertory  of  all  social  and  political  problems,  the 
latest  and  most  complex  of  all  the  great  crises  through 
which  our  race  has  passed. 

Let   us   avoid  misunderstanding   of  what  we  are  now 

1  Fortnightly  Revieiu,  vol.  xlv.  N.s.     June  1889. 
172 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1/89    DID.  173 

speaking.  Most  assuredly  the  close  of  the  eighteenth 
century  in  France  displayed  a  convulsion,  a  frenzy,  a 
chaos  such  as  the  world's  history  has  not  often  equalled. 
There  was  folly,  crime,  waste,  destruction,  confusion,  and 
horror  of  stupendous  proportions,  and  of  all  imaginable 
forms.  There  was  the  Terror,  the  Festival  of  Reason,  the 
Reaction,  and  all  the  delirium,  the  orgy,  the  extravagance, 
which  give  brilliancy  to  small  historians  and  serve  as  rhet- 
oric to  petty  politicians.  Assuredly  the  revolution  closed 
in  with  most  ghastly  surprises  to  the  philanthropists  and 
philosophers  who  entered  on  it  in  1789  with  so  light  a 
heart.  Assuredly  it  has  bequeathed  to  the  statesmen  and 
the  people  of  our  century  problems  of  portentous  difficulty 
and  number.  But  we  are  speaking  now  neither  of  '93  nor 
of  '95,  nor  of  '99,  of  no  local  or  special  incident,  of  no 
single  event,  nor  of  political  forms.  We  are  in  this  essay 
dealing  exclusively  with  '  the  ideas  of  '89,'  with  the  move- 
ment which  at  Versailles,  on  5th  May  1789,  took  outward 
and  visible  shape.  And  we  are  about  to  deal  with  it  in  its 
deeper,  social,  permanent,  and  human  side,  not  in  its 
transitory  and  material  side.  The  Seine,  the  Loire,  and 
the  Rhone  have  washed  away  the  blood  which  once  defiled 
their  streams,  the  havoc  caused  by  the  orgies  of  anarchy 
has  been  effaced,  years  make  fainter  the  memory  of  crimes 
and  follies,  of  revenge  and  jealousy.  But  the  course  of 
generations  still  deepens  the  meaning  of  'the  ideas  of  '89,' 
of  the  social,  intellectual,  economic  new  birth  which 
then  received  official  recognition,  opening  in  a  conscious 
and  popular  form  the  reformation  that,  in  a  spontaneous 
form,  had  long  been  brooding  in  so  many  generous  hearts 
and  profound  brains. 

No  reading  of  merely  French  history,  no  study  of  the 
reign  of  Louis  xvi.  by  itself,  can  explain  this  great 
movement — no  political  history,  no  narrative  of  events, 


1/4  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

no  account  of  any  special  institution.  Neither  the  degen- 
eration of  the  monarchy,  nor  the  corruption  of  the  nobility, 
nor  the  disorder  of  the  administration,  nor  the  barbarism 
of  the  feudal  law,  nor  the  decay  of  the  Church,  nor  the 
vices  of  society,  nor  the  teaching  of  any  school,  nor  all  of 
these  together  —  are  adequate  to  explain  the  revolution. 
They  are  enough  to  account  for  the  confusion,  waste,  con- 
flict, and  furyof  the  contest  —  i.e.  for  the  explosion.  But 
they  do  not  explain  how  it  is  that  hardly  anything  was  set 
up  in  France  between  1789  and  1799  which  had  not  been 
previously  discussed  and  prepared,  that  between  1789  and 
1799  an  immense  body  of  new  institutions  and  reformed 
methods  of  social  life  were  firmly  planted  in  such  a  way  that 
they  have  borne  fruit  far  and  wide  in  France  and  through 
Europe.  Nor  do  any  of  these  special  causes  just  enumer- 
ated suffice  to  explain  the  passion,  the  contagious  faith, 
the  almost  religious  fanaticism  which  was  the  inner 
strength  of  the  revolution  and  the  source  of  its  inex- 
haustible activity.  What  we  call  the  French  Revolution 
of  1789,  was  really  a  new  phase  of  civilisation  announcing 
its  advent  in  form.  It  had  the  character  of  religious  zeal 
because  it  was  a  movement  of  the  human  race  towards  a 
completer  humanity. 

Rhetoricians,  poets,  and  preachers  have  accustomed  us 
too  long  to  dwell  on  the  lurid  side  of  the  movement,  on  its 
follies,  crimes,  and  failures ;  they  have  overrated  the  rela- 
tive importance  of  the  catastrophe,  and  by  profuse  pictures 
of  the  horrors,  they  have  drawn  off  attention  from  its  solid 
and  enduring  fruits.  In  the  midst  of  the  agony  it  was 
natural  that  Burke,  in  the  sunset  of  his  judgment,  should 
denounce  it.  But  it  was  a  misfortune  for  the  last  genera- 
tion that  the  purple  mantle  of  Burke  should  have  fallen  on 
a  prophet,  who  was  not  a  statesman  but  a  man  of  letters, 
who,  with  all  Burke's  passion  and  prejudice,  had  but  little 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1789    DID.  1/5 

of  his  philosophic  power,  none  of  his  practical  sagacity, 
none  of  the  great  Whig's  experience  of  affairs  and  of  men. 
The  '  universal  bonfire '  theory,  the  '  grand  suicide  '  view, 
the  '  chaos-come-again  '  of  a  former  generation,  are  seen  to 
be  ridiculous  in  ours.  The  movement  of  1789  was  far  less 
the  final  crash  of  an  effete  system  than  it  was  the  new 
birth  of  a  greater  system,  or  rather  of  the  irresistible  germs 
of  a  greater  system.  The  contemporaries  of  Tacitus, 
Trajan,  and  Marcus  Aurelius  could  see  nothing  but  ruin 
in  the  superstition  of  the  Galileans,  just  as  the  con- 
temporaries of  Decius,  Julian,  and  Justinian  saw  nothing 
but  barbarism  in  the  Goths,  the  Franks,  and  the  Arabs. 

The  year  1789,  more  definitely  than  any  other  date 
marks  any  other  transition,  marks  the  close  of  a  society 
which  had  existed  for  some  thousands  of  years  as  a  con- 
sistent whole,  a  society  more  or  less  based  upon  military 
force,  intensely  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  hereditary  right, 
bound  up  with  ideas  of  theological  sanction,  sustained  by 
a  scheme  of  supramundane  authority;  a  society  based 
upon  caste,  on  class,  on  local  distinctions  and  personal 
privilege,  rooted  in  inequality,  political,  social,  material,  and 
moral ;  a  society  of  which  the  hope  of  salvation  was  the 
maintenance  of  the  status  quo,  and  of  which  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments were  Privilege.  And  the  same  year,  1789,  saw 
the  official  installation  of  a  society  which  was  essentially 
based  on  peace,  the  creed  of  which  was  industry,  equality, 
progress ;  a  society  where  change  was  the  evidence  of 
life,  the  end  of  which  was  social  welfare,  and  the  means 
social  co-operation  and  human  equity.  Union,  commun- 
ion, equality,  equity,  merit,  labour,  justice,  consolidation, 
fraternity  —  such  were  the  devices  and  symbols  of  the 
new  era.  It  is  therefore  with  justice  that  modern  Europe 
regards  the  date  1789  as  a  date  that  marks  a  greater 
evolution  in  human  history  more  distinctly  than,  perhaps, 


176  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

any  other  single  date  which  could  be  named  between  the 
reign  of  the  first  Pharaoh  and  the  reign  of  Victoria. 

One  of  the  cardinal  pivots  in  human  history  we  call  this 
epoch,  and  not  at  all  a  French  local  crisis.  The  proof  of 
this  is  complete.  All  the  nations  of  Europe,  and  indeed 
the  people  of  America,  contributed  their  share  to  the 
movement,  and  more  or  less  partook  in  the  movement 
themselves.  It  was  hailed  as  a  new  dispensation  by  men 
of  various  race  ;  and  each  nation  in  turn  more  or  less 
added  to  the  movement  and  adopted  some  element  of  the 
movement.  The  intellectual  and  social  upheaval,  which 
for  generations  had  been  preparing  the  movement,  was 
common  to  the  enlightened  spirits  of  Europe  and  also  to 
the  Transatlantic  Continent.  The  effects  of  the  move- 
ment have  been  shared  by  all  Europe,  and  the  distant 
consequences  of  its  action  are  visible  in  Europe  to  the 
third  and  the  fourth  generations.  And  lastly,  all  the 
cardinal  features  of  the  movement  of  1789  are  in  no  sense 
locally  French,  or  of  special  national  value.  They  are 
equally  applicable  to  Europe,  and  indeed  to  advanced 
human  societies  everywhere.  They  appeal  to  men  prima- 
rily, and  to  Frenchmen  secondarily.  They  relate  to  the 
general  society  of  Europe,  and  not  to  specific  national  in- 
stitutions. They  concern  the  transformation  of  a  feudal, 
hereditary,  privileged,  authoritative  society,  based  on  an- 
tique rig/it  into  a  republican,  industrial,  equalised,  human- 
ised society,  based  on  a  scientific  view  of  the  Common 
Weal.  But  this  is  not  a  national  idea,  a  French  concep- 
tion of  local  application.  It  is  European,  or  rather  human. 
And  thus,  however  disastrous  to  France  may  have  been 
the  travail  of  the  movement  officially  proclaimed  in  1789, 
from  ?.  European  and  a  human  point  of  view  it  has  abiding 
and  pregnant  issues.  May  we  profit  by  its  good  whilst  we 
are  spared  its  evil. 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1789    DID.  I// 

Obviously,  the  salient  form  of  the  revolution  was  French, 
ultra-French  ;  entirely  unique  and  of  inimitable  peculiarity 
in  some  of  its  worst  as  well  as  its  best  sides.  The  de- 
lirium, the  extravagances,  the  hysterics,  and  the  brutalities 
which  succeeded  one  another  in  a  series  of  strange  tragi- 
comic tableaux  from  1789  till  1795,  were  most  intensely 
French,  though  even  they,  from  Caps  of  Liberty  to  Fes- 
tival of  Pikes,  have  had  a  singular  fascination  for  the 
revolutionists  of  every  race.  But  the  picturesque  and 
melodramatic  accessories  of  the  revolution  have  been  so 
copiously  over-coloured  by  the  scene-painters  and  stage- 
carpenters  of  history,  that  we  are  too  often  apt  to  forget 
how  essentially  European  the  revolution  was  in  all  its 
deeper  meanings. 

A  dozen  kings  and  statesmen  throughout  Europe  were, 
in  a  way,  endeavouring  to  enter  on  the  same  path  as  Louis 
xvi.  with  Turgot  and  Necker.  In  spite  of  the  contrast 
between  the  government  of  England  and  the  government 
of  France,  between  the  condition  of  English  industry  and 
that  of  France,  Walpole  and  Pitt  offer  many  striking  points 
of  analogy  with  Turgot  and  Necker.  The  intellectual  com- 
merce between  England  and  France  from  (let  us  say)  1725 
to  1790  is  one  of  the  most  memorable  episodes  in  the 
history  of  the  human  mind.  The  two  generations  which 
followed  the  visit  of  Voltaire  to  England  formed  an  intel- 
lectual alliance  between  the  leading  spirits  of  our  two 
nations  :  an  alliance  of  amity,  offensive  and  defensive,  sci- 
entific, economic,  philosophical,  social,  and  political,  such 
as  had  not  been  seen  since  the  days  of  the  Greco-Roman 
education  or  the  cosmopolitan  fellowship  of  mediaeval  uni- 
versities. Voltaire,  Montesquieu,  Hume,  Adam  Smith, 
Franklin,  Turgot,  Quesnay,  Diderot,  Condorcet,  d'Argen- 
son,  Gibbon,  Washington,  Priestley,  Bentham — even  Rous- 
seau, Mabli,  Mirabeau,  and  Jefferson  —  belonged  to  a 
M 


178  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

Republic  of  Ideas,  where  national  character  and  local 
idiosyncrasy  could  indeed  be  traced  in  each,  but  where 
the  essential  patriotism  of  humanity  is  dominant  and 
supreme. 

In  England,  Pitt ;  in  Prussia,  Frederick ;  in  Austria, 
Joseph  ;  in  Tuscany,  Leopold  ;  in  Portugal,  Pombal  ;  in 
Spain,  d'Aranda  ;  all  laboured  to  an  end,  essentially  sim- 
ilar, in  reforming  the  incoherent,  unequal,  and  obsolete 
state  of  the  law  ;  in  rectifying  abuses  in  finance ;  in  bring- 
ing some  order  into  administration,  in  abolishing  some  of 
the  burdens  and  chains  on  industry  ;  in  improving  the 
material  condition  of  their  states ;  in  curbing  the  more 
monstrous  abuses  of  privilege  ;  and  in  founding  at  least 
the  germs  of  what  we  call  modern  civilised  government. 
Some  of  these  things  were  done  ill,  some  well,  most  of 
them  tentatively  and  with  a  nalfve  ignorance  of  the  tre- 
mendous forces  they  were  handling,  with  a  strange  child- 
ishness of  conception,  and  in  all  cases  without  a  trace  of 
suspicion  that  they  were  changing  the  sources  of  power 
and  their  political  constitution.  And  in  all  this  the  rulers 
were  led  and  inspired  by  a  crowd  of  economical  and  social 
reformers  who  eagerly  proclaimed  Utopia  at  hand,  and 
who  mistook  generous  ideals  for  scientific  knowledge. 
For  special  causes  the  great  social  evolution  concentrated 
itself  in  France  towards  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century  ;  but  there  was  nothing  about  it  exclusively 
French.  Socially  and  economically  viewed,  it  was  almost 
more  English  and  Anglo-American  than  French  ;  intel- 
lectually and  morally  viewed,  it  was  hardly  more  French 
than  it  was  English.  Hume,  Adam  Smith,  Burke,  and 
Priestley  are  as  potent  in  the  realm  of  thought  as  Diderot, 
Montesquieu,  Rousseau,  and  Condorcet.  And  in  the  realm 
of  social  reform,  Europe  owes  as  much  to  Bentham,  How- 
ard, Clarkson,- Franklin,  Washington,  Pitt,  and  Frederick, 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1/89    DID.  179 

as  it  does  to  Turgot,  Mirabeau,  Girondins,  Cordeliers,  or 
Jacobins.  The  '  ideas  of  '89,'  were  the  ideas  of  the  best 
brains  and  most  humane  spirits  in  the  advanced  nations 
of  mankind.  All  nations  bore  their  share  in  the  labour, 
and  all  have  shared  in  the  fruits. 

But  if  the  revolution  were  so  general  in  its  preparation, 
why  was  the  active  manifestation  of  it  concentrated  in 
France  ?  and  why  was  France  speedily  attacked  by  all  the 
nations  of  Europe  ?  These  two  questions  may  be  answered 
in  two  words.  In  France  only  were  the  old  and  the  new 
elements  ranged  face  to  face  without  intermixture  or  con- 
tact, with  nothing  between  them  but  a  decrepit  and  de- 
moralised autocracy.  And  no  sooner  had  the  inevitable 
collision  begun,  than  the  governments  of  Europe  were 
seized  with  panic  as  they  witnessed  the  fury  of  the  revolu- 
tionary forces.  In  England  the  Reformation,  the  Civil 
War,  the  Revolution  of  1689,  and  the  Hanoverian  dynasty 
had  transferred  the  power  of  the  monarchy  to  a  wealthy, 
energetic,  popular  aristocracy,  which  had  largely  aban- 
doned its  feudal  privileges,  and  had  closely  allied  itself 
with  the  interests  of  wealth.  During  two  centuries  of 
continual  struggle  and  partial  reform,  a  compromise  had 
been  affected  in  Church  and  in  State,  wherein  the  claims 
of  king,  priest,  noble,  and  merchant  had  been  fused  into  a 
tolerable  modus  vivendi.  In  France  the  contrary  was  the 
case.  During  two  centuries  the  monarchy  had  steadily 
asserted  itself  as  the  incarnation  of  the  public,  claiming 
for  itself  all  public  rights,  and  undertaking  (in  theory)  all 
public  duties ;  crushing  out  the  feudal  authorities  from  all 
national  duties,  but  guaranteeing  to  them  intact  the  whole 
of  their  personal  privileges.  As  it  had  dealt  with  the 
aristocracy  so  it  dealt  with  the  Church  ;  making  both  its 
tool,  filling  both  with  corruption,  and  giving  them  in 
exchange  nothing  but  license  to  exploit  the  lay  common- 


ISO  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

alty.  The  lay  commonalty  naturally  expanded  in  rooted 
hostility  to  the  privileged  orders,  and  to  the  religious 
and  hereditary  ideas  on  which  privilege  rested.  It  grew 
stronger  every  day,  having  no  admixture  with  the  old 
orders,  no  points  of  contact,  having  no  outlet  for  its  activ- 
ity, harassed,  insulted,  pillaged,  and  rebuffed  at  every 
turn,  twenty-six  millions  strong  against  two  hundred 
thousand ;  all  distinctions,  rivalries,  and  authority,  as 
amongst  this  tiers  Mat,  uniformly  crushed  by  the  superin- 
cumbent weight  of  Monarchy,  Church,  and  Privilege. 

The  vast  mass  of  the  people  thus  grew  consolidated, 
without  a  single  public  outlet  for  its  energies,  or  the 
smallest  opportunity  for  experience  in  affairs ;  the  whole 
ability  of  the  nation  for  politics,  administration,  law,  or 
war,  was  forced  into  abstract  speculation  and  social  dis- 
cussion ;  conscious  that  it  was  the  real  force  and  possessed 
the  real  wealth  of  the  nation  ;  increasing  its  resources  day 
by  day,  amidst  frightful  extortion  and  incredible  barbarism, 
which  it  was  bound  to  endure  without  a  murmur ;  the 
thinking  world,  to  whom  action  was  closed,  kept  watching 
the  tremendous  problems  at  stake  in  their  most  naked  and 
menacing  aspect,  without  any  disguise,  compromise,  or 
alleviation.  And  in  France,  where  the  old  feudal  and 
ecclesiastical  system  was  concentrated  in  its  most  aggra- 
vated form,  there  it  was  also  the  weakest,  most  corrupt, 
and  most  servile.  And  there,  too,  in  France  the  tiers  Mat 
was  the  most  numerous,  the  most  consolidated,  the  most 
charged  with  ideas,  the  most  sharply  separated  off,  the 
most  conscious  of  its  power,  the  most  exasperated  by 
oppression.  Thus  it  came  about  that  a  European  evolu- 
tion broke  out  in  France  into  revolution.  The  social 
battle  of  the  eighteenth  century  began  in  the  only  nation 
which  was  strictly  marshalled  in  two  opposing  camps  ; 
where  the  oppressors  were  utterly  enfeebled  by  corrup- 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1 789    DID.  l8l 

tion  ;  where  the  oppressed  were  fermenting  with  ideas 
and  boiling  with  indignation. 

The  fourteenth  and  the  fifteenth  centuries  saw  the  silent 
universal  but  unobserved  dissolution  of  the  old  mediaeval 
society.  For  crusades  the  soldier  took  to  the  puerilities 
of  the  tournament.  The  lordly  castles  fell  one  by  one 
before  the  strong  hand  of  the  king.  The  humble  village 
expanded  into  the  great  trading  town.  The  Church  was 
torn  by  factions  and  assailed  by  heresies.  The  musket- 
ball  destroyed  the  supremacy  of  the  mailed  knight.  The 
printing-press  made  science  and  thought  the  birthright  of 
all.  The  sixteenth  century  saw  a  temporary  resettlement 
in  a  strong  dominant  monarchy  and  a  compromise  in 
religion.  Whilst  the  seventeenth  century  in  England 
gave  power  to  a  transformed  and  modified  aristocracy,  in 
France  it  concentrated  the  whole  public  forces  in  a  mon- 
strous absolutism,  whilst  nobility  and  Church  grew  daily 
more  rife  with  obsolete  oppression.  Hence,  in  France, 
the  ancient  monarchy  stood  alone  as  the  centre  of  the  old 
system.  Beside  it  stood  the  new  elements  unfettered  and 
untransformed.  It  was  the  simplicity  of  the  problem,  the 
glaring  nature  of  the  contrast,  which  caused  the  intensity 
of  the  explosion.  The  old  system  stood  with  dry-rot  in  its 
heart ;  the  new  was  bursting  with  incoherent  hopes  and 
undefined  ideals.  The  Bastille  fell  —  and  a  new  era 
began. 

Take  a  rapid  survey  of  France  in  the  closing  years  of 
the  Monarchy.  She  had  not  recovered  the  desolation  of 
the  long  wars  of  Louis  xiv.,  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict 
of  Nantes,  the  banishment  of  the  Protestants,  the  mon- 
strous extravagance  of  Versailles  and  the  corrupt  system 
which  was  there  concentrated.  The  entire  authority  was 
practically  absorbed  by  the  Crown,  whilst  the  most  incred- 
ible confusion  and  disorganisation  reigned  throughout  the 


1 82  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

administration.  A  network  of  incoherent  authorities 
crossed,  recrossed,  and  embarrassed  each  other  through- 
out the  forty  provinces.  The  law,  the  customs,  the  or- 
ganisation of  the  provinces,  differed  from  each  other. 
Throughout  them  existed  thousands  of  hereditary  offices 
without  responsibility,  and  sinecures  cynically  created  for 
the  sole  purpose  of  being  sold.  The  administration  of 
justice  was  as  completely  incoherent  as  the  public  service. 
Each  province,  and  often  each  district,  city,  or  town,  had 
special  tribunals  with  peculiar  powers  of  its  own  and 
anomalous  methods  of  jurisdiction.  There  were  nearly 
four  hundred  different  codes  of  customary  law.  There 
were  civil  tribunals,  military  tribunals,  commercial  tribu- 
nals, exchequer  tribunals,  ecclesiastical  tribunals,  and 
manorial  tribunals.  A  vast  number  of  special  causes 
could  only  be  heard  in  special  courts  :  a  vast  body  of 
privileged  persons  could  only  be  sued  before  special 
judges.  If  civil  justice  was  in  a  state  of  barbarous  com- 
plication and  confusion,  criminal  justice  was  even  more 
barbarous.  Preliminary  torture  before  trial,  mutilation, 
ferocious  punishments,  a  lingering  death  by  torment,  a 
penal  code  which  had  death  or  bodily  mutilation  in  every 
page,  were  dealt  out  freely  to  the  accused  without  the 
protection  of  counsel,  the  right  of  appeal,  or  even  a  public 
statement  of  the  sentence.  For  ecclesiastical  offences, 
and  these  were  a  wide  and  vague  field,  the  punishment 
was  burning  alive.  Loss  of  the  tongue,  of  eyes,  of  limbs, 
and  breaking  on  the  wheel,  were  common  punishments  for 
very  moderate  crimes.  Madame  Roland  tells  us  how  the 
summer  night  was  made  hideous  by  the  yells  of  wretches 
dying  by  inches  after  the  torture  of  the  wheel.  With  this 
state  of  justice  there  went  systematic  corruption  in  the 
judges,  bribery  of  officials  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest, 
and  an  infinite  series  of  exactions  and  delays  in  trial.  To 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1/89    DID.  183 

all  but  the  rich  and  the  privileged,  a  civil  cause  portended 
ruin,  a  criminal  accusation  was  a  risk  of  torture  and  death. 

The  public  finances  were  in  even  more  dreadful  con- 
fusion than  public  justice.  The  revenue  was  farmed  to 
companies  and  to  persons  who  drew  from  it  enormous 
gains,  in  some  cases,  it  is  said,  cent,  per  cent.  The  deficit 
grew  during  the  reign  of  Louis  xv.  at  the  rate  of  four  or 
five  millions  sterling  each  year ;  and  by  the  end  of  the 
reign  of  Louis  xvi.  the  deficit  had  grown  to  eight  or  ten 
millions  a  year.  But  as  to  the  exact  deficit  for  each  year, 
or  as  to  the  total  debt  of  the  nation,  no  man  could  speak. 
Louis  xv.  in  one  year  personally  consumed  eight  millions 
sterling,  and  one  of  his  mistresses  alone  received  during 
her  reign  a  sum  of  more  than  two  millions.  Just  before 
the  Revolution  the  total  taxation  of  all  kinds  amounted  to 
some  sixty  millions  sterling.  Of  this  not  more  than  half 
was  spent  in  the  public  service.  The  rest  was  the  plunder 
of  the  privileged,  in  various  degrees,  from  king  to  the 
mistress's  lackey.  This  enormous  taxation  was  paid  mainly 
by  the  non-privileged,  who  were  less  than  twenty-six  mil- 
lions. The  nobles,  the  clergy,  were  exempt  from  property- 
tax,  though  they  held  between  them  more  than  half  of  the 
entire  land  of  France.  The  State  could  only  raise  loans 
at  a  rate  of  twenty  per  cent. 

With  an  army  of  less  than  140,000  men,  there  were 
60,000  officers,  in  active  service  or  on  half-pay,  all  of  them 
exclusively  drawn  from  the  privileged  class.  Twelve  thou- 
sand prelates  and  dignified  clergy  had  a  revenue  of  more 
than  two  millions  sterling.  Four  millions  more  was  divided 
amongst  some  60,000  minor  priests.  Altogether  the  privi- 
leged orders,  having  hereditary  rank  or  ecclesiastical  office, 
numbered  more  than  200,000  persons.  Besides  these,  some 
50,000  families  were  entitled  to  hereditary  office  of  a  judi- 
cial sort,  who  formed  the  '  nobility  of  the  robe.'  The 


184  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

trades  and  merchants  were  organised  in  privileged  gilds, 
and  every  industry  was  bound  by  a  network  of  corporate 
and  local  restrictions.  Membership  of  a  gild  was  a  matter 
of  purchase.  Not  only  was  each  gild  a  privileged  corpora- 
tion, but  each  province  was  fiscally  a  separate  state,  with 
its  local  dues,  local  customs'  tariff,  and  special  frontiers. 
In  the  south  of  France  alone  there  were  some  4000  miles 
of  internal  customs'  frontier.  An  infinite  series  of  dues 
were  imposed  in  confusion  over  districts  selected  by  hazard 
or  tradition.  An  article  would  sell  in  one  province  for  ten 
times  the  price  it  would  have  in  another  province.  The 
dues  chargeable  on  the  navigation  of  a  single  river 
amounted,  we  are  told,  to  thirty  per  cent,  of  the  value  of 
the  goods  carried. 

But  these  abuses  were  trifling  or  at  least  endurable  when 
set  beside  the  abuses  which  crushed  the  cultivation  of  the 
soil.  About  a  fifth  of  the  soil  of  France  was  in  mortmain, 
the  inalienable  property  of  the  Church.  Nearly  half  the 
soil  was  held  in  big  estates,  and  was  tilled  on  the  metayer 
system.  About  one-third  of  it  was  the  property  of  the 
peasant.  But  though  the  property  of  the  peasant,  it  was 
bound,  as  he  was  bound,  by  an  endless  list  of  restrictions. 
In  the  Middle  Ages  each  fief  had  been  a  kingdom  of  itself ; 
each  lord  a  petty  king  ;  the  government,  the  taxation,  the 
regulation  of  each  fief,  was  practically  the  national  govern- 
ment, the  public  taxation,  and  the  social  institutions.  But 
in  France,  whilst  the  national  authority  had  passed  from 
the  lord  of  the  fief  to  the  national  Crown,  the  legal  privi- 
leges, the  personal  and  local  exemptions,  were  preserved 
intact.  The  peasant  remained  for  many  practical  purposes 
a  serf,  even  whilst  he  owned  his  own  farm.  A  series  of 
dues  were  payable  to  the  lord  ;  personal  services  were  still 
exacted  ;  special  rights  were  in  full  vigour.  The  peasant, 
proprietor  as  he  was,  still  delved  the  lord's  land,  carted  his 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1789    DID.  185 

produce,  paid  his  local  dues,  made  his  roads.  All  this 
had  to  be  done  without  payment,  as  cotvfa,  or  forced  labour 
tax.  The  peasants  were  in  the  position  of  a  people  during 
a  most  oppressive  state  of  siege,  when  a  foreign  army  is  in 
occupation  of  a  country.  The  foreign  army  was  the  privi- 
leged order.  Everything  and  every  one  outside  of  this  order 
was  the  subject  of  oppressive  requisition.  The  lord  paid  no 
taxes  on  his  lands,  was  not  answerable  to  the  ordinary  tri- 
bunals, was  practically  exempt  from  the  criminal  law,  had 
the  sole  right  of  sporting,  could  alone  serve  as  an  officer  in 
the  army,  could  alone  aspire  to  any  office  under  the  Crown. 
In  one  province  alone  during  a  single  reign  two  thousand 
tolls  were  abolished.  There  were  tolls  on  bridges,  on  ferries, 
on  paths,  on  fairs,  on  markets.  There  were  rights  of  warren, 
rights  of  pigeon-houses,  of  chase,  and  fishing.  There  were 
dues  payable  on  the  birth  of  an  heir,  on  marriage,  on  the 
acquisition  of  a  new  property  by  the  lord,  dues  payable  for 
fire,  for  the  passage  of  a  flock,  for  pasture,  for  wood.  The 
peasant  was  compelled  to  bring  his  corn  to  be  ground  in 
the  lord's  mill,  to  crush  his  grapes  at  the  lord's  wine-press, 
to  suffer  his  crops  to  be  devoured  by  the  lord's  game  and 
pigeons.  A  heavy  fine  was  payable  on  sale  or  transfer  of 
the  property ;  on  every  side  were  due  quit-rents,  rent- 
charges,  fines,  dues  in  money  and  in  kind,  which  could  not 
be  commuted  and  could  not  be  redeemed.  After  the  lord's 
dues  came  those  of  the  Church,  the  tithes  payable  in  kind, 
and  other  dues  and  exactions  of  the  spiritual  army.  And 
even  this  was  but  the  domestic  side  of  the  picture.  After 
the  lord  and  the  Church  came  the  king's  officers,  the  king's 
taxes,  the  king's  requisitions,  with  all  the  multiform  op- 
pression, corruption,  and  peculation  of  the  farmers  of  the 
revenue  and  the  intendants  of  the  province. 

Under  this  manifold  congeries  of  more  than  Turkish 
misrule,  it  was  not  surprising  that  agriculture  was  ruined 


1 86  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

and  the  'country  became  desolate.  A  fearful  picture  of 
that  desolation  has  been  drawn  for  us  by  our  economist, 
Arthur  Young,  in  1787,  1788,  1789.  Every  one  is  familiar 
with  the  dreadful  passages  wherein  he  speaks  of  haggard 
men  and  women  wearily  tilling  the  soil,  sustained  on  black 
bread,  roots,  and  water,  and  living  in  smoky  hovels  with- 
out windows  ;  of  the  wilderness  presented  by  the  estates 
of  absentee  grandees  ;  of  the  infinite  tolls,  dues,  taxes,  and 
impositions,  of  the  cruel  punishments  on  smugglers,  on 
the  dealers  in  contraband  salt,  on  poachers,  and  deserters. 
It  was  not  surprising  that  famines  were  incessant,  that  the 
revenue  decreased,  and  that  France  was  sinking  into  the 
decrepitude  of  an  Eastern  absolutism.  '  For  years,'  said 
d'Argenson,  '  I  have  watched  the  ruin  increasing.  Men 
around  me  are  now  starving  like  flies,  or  eating  grass.' 
There  were  thirty  thousand  beggars,  and  whole  provinces 
living  on  occasional  alms,  two  thousand  persons  in  prison 
for  smuggling  salt  alone.  Men  were  imprisoned  by  lettres 
de  cachet  by  the  thousand. 

This  state  of  things  was  only  peculiar  to  France  by 
reason  of  the  vast  area  over  which  it  extended,  of  the  sys- 
tematic scale  on  which  it  was  worked,  and  the  intense 
concentration  of  the  evil.  In  substance  it  was  common  to 
Europe.  It  was  the  universal  legacy  of  the  feudal  system, 
and  the  general  corruption  of  hereditary  government.  In 
England,  four  great  crises,  that  of  1540,  1648,  1688,  and 
1714,  had  very  largely  got  rid  of  these  evils.  But  they 
existed  in  even  greater  intensity  in  Ireland  and  partly  in 
Scotland ;  they  flourished  in  the  East  of  Europe  in  full 
force ;  the  corruption  of  government  was  as  great  in  the 
South  of  Europe.  The  profligacy  of  Louis  xv.  was  hardly 
worse  in  spirit,  though  it  was  more  disgusting  than  that 
of  Charles  n.  The  feudalism  of  Germany  and  Austria 
was  quite  as  barbarous  as  that  of  France.  And  in  Italy 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1789    DID.  1 8? 

and  in  Spain  the  Church  was  more  intolerant,  more  de- 
praved, and  more  powerful.  But  in  France,  the  whole  of 
the  antique  abuses  were  collected  in  their  most  aggravated 
shape,  in  the  most  enormous  volume,  and  with  the  least 
of  compensating  check.  In  England,  the  persons  with 
hereditary  rank  hardly  numbered  more  than  a  few  hun- 
dreds, and  perhaps  the  entire  families  of  the  noble  class 
did  not  exceed  two  thousand  ;  in  France  they  exceeded 
one  hundred  thousand.  In  England  the  prelates  and  dig- 
nified clergy  hardly  exceeded  one  or  two  hundred ;  in 
France  they  numbered  twelve  thousand.  In  England  the 
entire  body  of  ecclesiastics  did  not  number  twenty  thou- 
sand ;  in  France  they  much  exceeded  one  hundred  thousand. 
In  England,  no  single  subject  had  any  personal  privilege, 
except  the  trifling  personal  exemptions  of  a  few  hundred 
peers ;  no  exemption  from  taxation  was  known  to  the  law ; 
and  no  land  was  free  from  the  king's  taxes.  In  France 
more  than  half  the  soil,  and  two  orders,  amounting  together 
to  over  two  hundred  thousand  persons,  were  exempt.  In 
England,  with  trifling  exceptions,  the  old  feudal  rights  had 
become  obsolete  or  nominal.  The  legal  rights  of  the  lord 
had  disappeared,  along  with  his  castle,  in  the  great  Civil 
War.  In  France  the  lord  retained  his  social  prerogatives 
after  losing  the  whole  of  his  public  functions.  In  Germany, 
in  Italy,  in  Spain,  the  lord  still  retained  a  large  part  of  his 
real  power,  and  had  been  forced  to  surrender  some  definite 
portion  of  his  oppressive  privilege. 

But  in  France,  where  the  whole  of  the  ancient  abuses 
existed  on  a  scale  and  with  an  organised  completeness  that 
was  seen  nowhere  else,  there  was  also  the  most  numerous, 
the  most  enlightened,  and  the  most  ambitious  body  of 
reformers.  In  presence  of  this  portentous  misrule  and 
this  outrageous  corruption,  an  army  of  ardent  spirits  had 
been  gathered  together  with  a  passionate  desire  to  correct 


1 88  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

it.  It  was  an  army  recruited  from  all  classes  —  from  the 
ancient  nobility,  and  even  the  royal  blood,  from  the  lords 
of  the  soil,  and  the  dignitaries  of  the  Church,  from  lawyers, 
physicians,  merchants,  artificers ;  from  sons  of  the  petty 
tradesmen,  like  Diderot ;  from  sons  of  the  notary,  like 
Voltaire ;  of  the  clock-maker,  like  Rousseau  ;  of  the  canon- 
ess,  like  d'Alembert ;  of  the  provost,  like  Turgot ;  of  the 
marquis,  like  d'Argenson  and  Condorcet.  This  band  of 
thinkers  belonged  to  no  special  class,  and  to  no  single 
country.  Intellectually  speaking,  its  real  source  in  the 
first  half  of  the  century  was  in  England,  in  English  ideas 
of  religious  and  political  equality,  in  English  institutions 
of  material  good  government  and  industry.  In  the  two 
generations  preceding  1789,  such  Englishmen  as  Boling- 
broke,  Hume,  Adam  Smith,  Priestley,  Bentham,  John 
Howard  (one  might  almost  claim  part,  at  least,  of  Burke 
and  of  Pitt)  ;  such  Americans  as  Franklin,  Washington, 
and  Jefferson ;  such  Italians  as  Beccaria  and  Galiani ;  such 
Germans  as  Lessing,  Goethe,  Frederick  the  Great,  and 
Joseph  ii.,  had  as  much  part  in  it  as  Voltaire,  Montesquieu, 
Turgot,  Diderot,  and  Condorcet,  and  the  rest  of  the  French 
thinkers  who  are  specially  associated  in  our  thoughts  with 
the  movement  so  ill-described  as  the  French  Revolution. 

By  the  efforts  of  such  men  every  element  of  modern 
society,  and  every  political  institution  as  we  now  know  it, 
had  been  reviewed  and  debated  —  not,  indeed,  with  any 
coherent  doctrine,  and  utterly  without  system  or  method. 
The  reformers  differed  much  amongst  themselves,  and  there 
were  almost  as  many  schemes  of  political  philosophy,  of 
social  economy,  or  practical  organisation,  as  there  were 
writers  and  speakers.  But  in  the  result,  what  we  now  call 
modern  Europe  emerged,  recast  in  State,  in  Church,  in 
financial,  commercial,  and  industrial  organisation,  with  a 
new  legal  system,  a  new  fiscal  system,  a  humane  code,  and 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1789    DID.  189 

religious  equality.  Over  the  whole  of  Europe  the  civil 
and  criminal  code  was  entirely  recast ;  cruel  punishments, 
barbarous  sentences,  anomalies,  and  confusion  were  swept 
away;  the  treatment  of  criminals,  of  the  sick,  of  the  insane, 
and  of  the  destitute  was  subjected  to  a  continuous  and 
systematic  reform,  of  which  we  have  as  yet  seen  only  the 
first  instalment.  The  whole  range  of  fiscal  taxation,  local 
and  imperial,  external  and  internal,  direct  and  indirect,  has 
been  in  almost  every  part  of  Western  Europe  entirely 
reformed.  A  new  local  administration  on  the  principle  of 
departments,  subdivided  into  districts,  cantons,  and  com- 
munes, has  been  established  in  France,  and  thence  copied 
in  a  large  part  of  Europe.  The  old  feudal  system  of  ter- 
ritorial law,  which  in  England  had  been  to  a  great  extent 
reformed  at  the  Civil  War,  was  recast  not  only  in  France 
but  in  the  greater  part  of  Western  Europe.  Protestants, 
Jews,  and  Dissenters  of  all  orders  practically  obtained  full 
toleration  and  the  right  of  worship.  The  monstrous  cor- 
ruption and  wealth  of  the  remnants  of  the  mediaeval  Church 
was  reduced  to  manageable  proportions.  Public  education 
became  one  of  the  great  functions  of  the  State.  Public 
health,  public  morality,  science,  art,  industry,  roads,  posts, 
and  trade  became  the  substantive  business  of  government. 
These  are  'the  ideas  of  '89'  —  these  are  the  ideas  which 
for  two  generations  before  '89  Europe  had  been  preparing, 
and  which  for  three  generations  since  '89  she  has  been 
systematically  working  out. 

We  have  just  taken  a  rapid  survey  of  France  in  its  polit- 
ical and  material  organisation  down  to  1789,  let  us  take 
an  equally  rapid  survey  of  the  new  institutions  which  1789 
so  loudly  proclaimed,  and  so  stormily  introduced. 

i.  For  the  old  patriarchal,  proprietary,  de  jure  theory 
of  rule,  there  was  everywhere  substituted  on  the  continent 
of  Europe  the  popular,  fiduciary,  pro  bono  publico  notion 


THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

of  rule.  Government  ceased  to  be  the  privilege  of  the 
ruler ;  it  became  a  trust  imposed  on  the  ruler  for  the  com- 
mon weal  of  the  ruled.  Long  before  1789  this  general 
idea  had  been  established  in  England  and  in  the  United 
States.  During  the  whole  of  the  seventeenth  and  eigh- 
teenth centuries  English  political  struggles  had  centred 
round  this  grand  principle :  the  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence in  1776  had  formulated  it  in  memorable  phrases. 
But  how  little  the  full  meaning  of  this  —  the  cardinal  idea 
of  1789  —  was  completely  accepted  even  in  England,  the 
whole  history  of  the  reign  of  George  in.  may  remind  us, 
and  the  second  and  reactionary  half  of  the  careers  of 
William  Pitt  and  Edmund  Burke.  Over  the  continent  of 
Europe,  down  to  1789,  the  proprietary  jure  divino  theory 
of  privilege  existed  in  full  force,  except  in  some  petty 
republics,  which  were  of  slight  practical  consequence.  The 
long  war,  the  reactionary  Empire  of  Napoleon,  and  the 
royal  reaction  which  followed  its  overthrow,  made  a  faint 
semblance  of  revival  for  privilege.  But,  after  the  final 
extinction  of  the  Bourbons  in  1830,  the  idea  of  privilege 
disappeared  from  the  conception  of  the  State.  In  England, 
the  Reform  Act  of  1832,  and  finally  the  European  move- 
ments of  1848,  completed  the  change.  So  that  throughout 
Europe,  west  of  Russia  and  of  Turkey,  all  governments 
alike  —  imperial,  royal,  aristocratic,  or  republican  as  they 
may  be  in  form,  exist  more  or  less  in  fact,  and  in  profession 
exist  exclusively,  for  the  general  welfare  of  the  nation. 
This  is  the  first  and  central  idea  of  '89. 

This  idea  is,  in  the  deeper  meaning  of  the  word,  repub- 
lican —  so  far  as  republican  implies  the  public  good,  the 
common  weal  as  contrasted  with  privilege,  property,  or 
right.  But  it  is  not  exclusively  republican,  in  the  sense 
that  it  implies  the  absence  of  a  single  ruler ;  nor  is  it  nec- 
essarily democratic,  in  the  sense  of  being  direct  govern- 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1789    DID.  IQI 

ment  by  numbers.  It  is  an  error  to  assume  that  the 
Revolution  of  1/89  introduced  as  an  abstract  doctrine 
the  democratic  republic  pure  and  simple.  Republics  and 
democracies  of  many  forms  grew  out  of  the  movement. 
But  the  movement  itself  also  threw  up  many  forms  of  gov- 
ernment by  a  dictator,  government  by  a  Council,  constitu- 
tional monarchy,  and  democratic  imperialism.  All  of  these 
equally  claim  to  be  based  on  the  doctrine  of  the  common 
weal,  and  to  represent  the  ideas  of  '89.  And  they  have 
ample  right  to  make  that  claim.  The  movement  of  '89, 
based  on  the  dominant  idea  of  the  public  good  as  opposed 
to  privilege,  took  all  kinds  of  form  in  the  mouths  of  those 
who  proclaimed  it.  Voltaire  understood  it  in  one  way, 
Montesquieu  in  another,  Diderot  in  a  third,  and  Rousseau 
in  a  fourth.  The  democratic  monarchy  of  d'Argenson,  the 
constitutional  monarchy  of  Mirabeau,  the  democratic  re- 
public of  Marat,  the  plutocratic  republic  of  Vergniaud,  the 
republican  dictatorship  of  Danton,  even  the  military  dicta- 
torship of  the  First  Consul  —  were  all  alike  different  read- 
ings of  the  Bible  of  '89.  It  means  government  by  capacity, 
not  by  hereditary  title,  with  the  welfare  of  the  whole  peo- 
ple as  its  end,  and  the  consent  of  the  governed  as  its  sole 
legitimate  title. 

2.  The  next  grand  idea  of  '89  is  the  scientific  consoli- 
dation of  law,  administration,  personal  right,  and  local 
responsibility.  Out  of  the  infinite  confusion  of  inequality 
that  the  lingering  decay  of  Feudalism  during  four  centuries 
had  left  in  Europe,  France  emerged  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury with  a  scientific  and  uniform  code  of  law,  a  just  and 
scientific  system  of  land  tenure,  an  admirable  system  of 
local  organisation,  almost  absolute  equality  of  persons 
before  the  law,  and  almost  complete  assimilation  of  terri- 
torial right.  The  French  peasant  who  in  1789  struck 
Arthur  Young  with  horror  and  pity,  as  the  scandal  of 


IQ2  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

Europe,  is  now  the  envy  of  the  tillers  of  the  soil  in  most 
parts  of  the  continent,  and  assuredly  in  these  islands. 
The  most  barbarous  land  tenure  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, the  most  brutal  criminal  code,  the  most  complicated 
fabric  ever  raised  by  privilege,  which  France  in  1789  ex- 
hibited to  the  scorn  of  mankind,  has  given  way  to  the 
most  advanced  scheme  of  personal  equality,  to  the  para- 
dise of  the  peasant  proprietor,  and  to  the  least  feudalised 
of  all  codes,  which  France  can  exhibit  at  present.  It 
would  be  far  easier  to  show  in  England  to-day  the  un- 
weeded  remnants  of  feudal  privilege,  of  landlord  law  and 
landlord  justice,  and  certainly  it  is  easier  to  show  it  in 
Ireland  and  in  Scotland,  than  it  is  in  France.  Territorial 
oppression,  the  injustice  of  the  land-laws,  the  burden  of 
game,  or  the  customary  exactions  of  the  landlord,  may  be 
found  in  Ireland,  may  be  found  in  Scotland,  may  be  found 
in  England  —  but  they  have  absolutely  disappeared  in 
France.  Her  eight  million  peasants  who  own  the  soil  are 
the  masters  of  their  own  destiny,  for  France  has  now  eight 
million  kings,  eight  million  lords  of  the  soil.  The  20,000 
or  30,000,  it  may  be,  who  in  these  islands  own  the  rural 
lands,  should  ponder  when  the  turn  of  their  labourers  will 
come  to  share  in  'the  ideas  of  '89.' 

3.  Down  to  1789  France  exhibited  an  amazing  chaos  of 
local  government  institutions.  In  the  nineteenth  century 
she  possessed  one  that  was  perhaps  the  most  symmetrical, 
the  most  scientific,  and  the  most  adaptable  now  extant. 
It  may  well  be  that  under  it  centralisation  has  been  grossly 
exaggerated  and  local  life  suppressed.  That,  however,  is 
a  legacy  from  the  old  monarchy,  and  is  not  the  work  of 
the  Revolution.  The  idea  of  '89  is  not  centralisation,  but 
decentralisation.  The  excessive  concentration  of  power 
in  the  hands  of  a  prefect  is  part  of  the  ancient  tradition 
of  France.  The  aim  of  d'Argenson,  of  Turgot,  of  Mabli, 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1789    DID.  193 

of  Malesherbes,  was  to  give  free  life  to  local  energy,  to  re- 
strain the  abuses  of  bureaucracy.  There  is  still  in  France 
an  oppressive  measure  of  bureaucracy  and  a  monstrous  cen- 
tralisation. But  a  large  part  of  the  continent  has  adopted 
from  her  the  organic  arrangement  of  subordinate  authori- 
ties which  the  Revolution  created,  and  which  may  be 
equally  adopted  by  monarchy,  empire,  or  republic ;  which 
may  be  combined  with  local  self-government  as  well  as 
with  imperial  autocracy. 

4.  Much  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  law  which  the 
Revolution  founded.     The  Civil  Code  of  France,  to  which 
so  unfairly   Napoleon    contrived   to   give    his  name,  was 
neither  the  work  of  Bonaparte,  nor  of  the  Empire,  nor  of 
the  nineteenth  century.     It  was  in  substance  the  work  of 
Pothier,  of  the  great  lawyers  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
from  whose  writings  four-fifths  of  it  is  textually  taken  ; 
and  Tronchet,  its  true  author,  is  essentially  a  man  of  the 
eighteenth  century.     It  is  true  that,  compared  with  some 
modern  codes,  the  Civil  Code  of  France  is  visibly  defec- 
tive.    But,  such  as  it  is,  it  has  made  the  tour  of  Europe, 
and  is  the  basis  of  half  the  codes  now  extant.     It  was  the 
earliest  scientific  code   of   modern  law,  for  the  Code   of 
Frederick  belongs  to  the  world  of  yesterday,  and  not  of 
to-day.     The  Civil  Code  of  France  remains  still,  with  all 
its  shortcomings,  the  great  type  of  a  modern  code,  and  is 
a  truly  splendid  fruit  of  the  ideas  of  '89. 

5.  With  the  Code  came  in  also  a  scientific  recasting  of 
the  entire  system  of  justice  —  civil,  criminal,  commercial, 
and  constitutional ;  local  and  central,  primary,  intermedi- 
ate, and   supreme.     Within  a  generation    at    most,   to  a 
great  extent  within  a  few  years,  France  passed  from  a 
system  of  justice  the  most  complex,  cruel,  and  obsolete, 
to  a  system  the  most  symmetrical,  humane,  and  scientific. 
And  that  which  in  England,  and  in  many  other  countries 

N 


THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

of  Europe,  has  been  the  gradual  work  of  a  century,  was 
reached  in  France  almost  at  a  bound  by  the  generation 
that  saw  '89. 

6.  With  a  new  law  there  came  in  a  new  fiscal  system,  a 
reform  as  important,  as  elaborate  as  that  of  the  civil  code, 
and  we  must  say  quite  as  successful.     The  financial  condi- 
tion of  France  during  the  whole  of  the  reigns  of  Louis  xv. 
and  Louis  xvi.  had  presented  perhaps  the  most  stupendous 
example  of  confusion  and  corruption  which  could  be  found 
outside  a  Turkish  or  Asiatic  despotism.     It  was  unquestion- 
ably the  direct,  primary,  material  origin  of  the  Revolution. 
It  was  the  main  object  of  the  labours  of  the  truest  reform- 
ers of  the  age.     D'Argenson,  Turgot,  Malesherbes,  Necker, 
and  Mirabeau  devoted  to  the  appalling  task  the  best  of 
their  thoughts  and  efforts.     Before  all  of  them,  and  before 
all  the  names  of  the  century,  the  noble  Turgot  stands  forth 
as  the  very  type  of  the  financial  reformer.     The  condi- 
tions in  which  he  sacrificed  his  life  in  vain  efforts  were  too 
utterly  bad  for  even  his  genius  and  heroic  honesty  to  pre- 
vail.    But  the  effort  was  not  in  vain.     The  idea  of  '89  was 
to  put  an  end  to  the  monstrous  injustice  and  plunder  of  the 
old  monarchic  and  feudal  fisc,  to  establish  in  its  place  an 
equal,  just,  scientific  system  of  finance.     Compared  with 
English  finance,  the  great  triumph  of  parliamentary  govern- 
ment, the  financial  system  of  modern  France  seems  often 
defective  to  us.     But  as  compared  with  the  financial  con- 
dition of  the  rest  of  Europe,  the  reforms  of  '89  have  prac- 
tically accomplished  the  end. 

7.  Along  with  a  reformed  finance  came  in  a  reformed 
tariff,  the  entire  sweeping  away  of  the  provincial  customs' 
frontier,    that    monstrous  legacy  of  feudal  disintegration, 
and  a  complete  revision  of  the  burdens  on  industry.     Polit- 
ical economy  as  a  science  may  be  said  to  be  one  of  the  car- 
dinal ideas  of  '89 ;  the  very  conception  of  a  social  science, 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1/89    DID.  IQ5 

vaguely  and  dimly  perceived  by  the  great  leaders  of  thought 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  was  itself  one  of  the  most 
potent  causes,  and  in  some  ways,  one  of  the  most  striking 
effects  of  the  Revolution  of  '89.  The  great  founders  of 
the  conception  of  a  social  science  were  all  prominent  chiefs 
of  the  movement  which  culminated  in  that  year.  Voltaire, 
Montesquieu,  Diderot,  d'Argenson,  Turgot,  Quesnay,  Con- 
dorcet,  were  'at  once  social  economists  and  precursors  of 
the  great  crisis.  Adam  Smith  was  as  much  an  authority 
in  France  as  he  was  in  England.  Political  economy  and  a 
scientific  treatment  of  the  national  production  and  con- 
sumption became  with  the  Revolution  a  cardinal  idea  of 
statesmen  and  publicists.  We  are  apt  to  think  that  our 
French  friends  are  weak-kneed  economists  at  best,  and  per- 
versely inclined  to  economic  heresy.  It  may  be  so.  Our 
free-trade  doctrines  have  been  preached  to  deaf  ears,  and 
our  gospel  of  absolute  freedom  makes  but  little  progress  in 
France.  But  it  can  hardly  be  denied  that  the  economic 
legislation  of  France  is  entirely  in  accord  with  economic 
doctrine  in  France,  or  that  the  political  economy  of  the 
State  is  abreast  of  the  demands  of  public  opinion. 

8.  To  pass  from  purely  material  interests  to  moral,  social, 
and  spiritual,  we  must  never  lose  sight  of  the  splendid  fact 
that  national  education  is  an  idea  0^89.  A  crowd  of  the 
great  names  in  the  revolutionary  movement  are  honourably 
identified  with  this  sacred  cause.  Voltaire,  Montesquieu, 
Rousseau,  Diderot,  Turgot,  Condorcet,  d'Argenson,  Mira- 
beau,  Danton  —  all  felt  to  the  depths  of  their  soul  that  the 
New  Commonwealth  could  exist  only  by  an  enlightened 
people.  Public  education  was  the  inspiration  of  the  En- 
cyclopaedia ;  it  was  the  gospel  of  '89,  and  the  least  tarnished 
of  all  its  legacies  to  our  age.  In  the  midst  of  the  Terror 
and  the  war,  the  Convention  pursued  its  plans  of  founding 
a  public  education.  The  idea  was  in  no  sense  specially 


196  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

French,  in  no  sense  the  direct  work  of  the  revolutionary 
assemblies.  England,  America,  Germany,  Europe  as  a 
whole,  partook  of  the  new  conception  of  the  duties  of  the 
State.  It  belongs  to  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury altogether.  But  of  all  the  enthusiasts  for  popular  edu- 
cation, there  are  no  names  which  will  survive  longer  in  the 
roll  of  the  benefactors  of  humanity  than  those  of  Voltaire, 
Rousseau,  Diderot,  Turgot,  and  Condorcet. 

9.  With  popular  education  there  went  quite  naturally  a 
series  of  social  institutions  of  a  philanthropic  sort.  Hos- 
pitals, asylums,  poor-houses,  museums,  libraries,  galleries  of 
art  and  science,  public  parks,  sanitary  appliances,  and  pub- 
lic edifices  were  no  longer  matters  of  royal  caprice,  or  of 
casual  benefaction  :  they  became  the  serious  work  of 
imperial  and  municipal  government.  Almost  everything 
which  we  know  as  modern  civilisation  in  these  social  insti- 
tutions has  taken  organic  shape  and  systematic  form  within 
these  hundred  years.  Except  for  its  royal  palaces,  Paris  in 
the  opening  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  a  squalid,  ill- 
ordered,  second-rate  city.  Marseilles,  Lyons,  Bordeaux, 
had  neither  dignity,  beauty,  nor  convenience.  Except  for 
a  few  royal  foundations,  neither  France,  nor  its  capital,  was 
furnished  with  more  than  the  meagrest  appliances  of  pub- 
lic health  and  charitable  aid.  The  care  of  the  sick,  of  the 
weak,  of  the  destitute,  of  children,  of  the  people,  the  eman- 
cipation of  the  negro  —  all  this  is  essentially  an  idea  of  '89. 

10.  To  sum  up  all  these  reforms  we  must  conclude  with 
that  of  the  Church.  The  Church  of  France  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  if  it  were  one  of  the  most  splendid  and  the 
most  able,  was  the  most  arrogant  and  oppressive  survival 
of  the  old  Mediaeval  Catholicism.  With  an  army  of  more 
than  50,000  priests,  and  some  50,000  persons  in  monas- 
teries and  bound  by  religious  vows,  owning  one-fifth  of  the 
soil  of  France,  with  a  revenue  which,  in  the  values  of  to- 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1/89    DID.  197 

day,  approached  ten  millions  sterling,  with  personal,  terri- 
torial, and  legal  privileges  without  number,  the  Gallican 
Church  in  the  age  of  Voltaire  and  Diderot  was  a  portent  of 
pride,  tyranny,  and  intolerance.  A  Church  which,  down  to 
1766,  could  still  put  Protestants  to  death  with  revolting 
cruelty,  which  is  stained  with  the  damning  memories  of 
Calas  and  La  Barre,  which  was  almost  as  corrupt  as  the 
nobility,  almost  as  oppressive  as  the  royalty,  which  added  to 
the  barbarism  of  the  ancien  regime  the  savage  traditions 
of  the  Inquisition,  which  left  undone  all  that  it  ought 
to  have  done,  and  did  all  that  it  ought  not  to  have  done 
—  such  a  Church  cumbered  the  earth.  It  fell,  and  loud 
and  great  was  the  crash,  and  fierce  have  been  the  wailings 
which  still  fill  the  air  over  its  ruins.  The  world  has 
heard  enough  and  too  much  of  Voltaire's  curse  against 
rinfdme,  of  Diderot's  ferocious  distich,  how  the  entrails  of 
the  last  priest  should  serve  as  halter  to  the  last  king.  No 
one  to-day  justifies  the  fury  of  their  diatribes,  except  by 
reminding  the  nineteenth  century  what  it  was  that,  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  was  called  the  Church  of  Christ.  The 
Church  fell,  but  it  returned  again.  It  revived  transformed, 
reformed,  and  shorn  of  its  pretensions.  Its  intolerance  has 
been  utterly  stript  off  it.  It  is  now  but  one  of  other  en- 
dowed sects.  It  has  less  than  one-fifth  of  its  old  wealth, 
none  of  its  old  intolerable  prerogatives,  and  but  a  shadow 
of  its  old  pretensions  and  pride. 

The  present  essay  proposes  to  deal  with  the  social  and 
political  aspect  of  the  movement  of  1789,  not  with  the 
wide  and  subtle  field  of  the  intellectual  and  humanitarian 
movement  which  was  its  prelude  and  spiritual  director. 
But  a  short  notice  is  needed  of  the  principal  leaders  of 
thought  by  whom  the  social  and  political  work  was  in- 
spired. For  practical  purposes  they  may  be  grouped 
under  four  general  heads.  There  was  the  work  of  destroy- 


198  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

ing  the  old  elements,  and  the  work  of  constructing  the 
new.  The  work  was  intellectual  and  religious  on  the  one 
hand,  social  and  political  on  the  other.  This  suggests  a 
fourfold  division:  (i)  the  school  of  thought  whereby  the 
old  intellectual  system  was  discredited  ;  (2)  that  by  which 
the  old  political  system  was  destroyed ;  (3)  those  who 
laboured  to  construct  a  new  intellectual  and  moral  basis 
of  society ;  and  (4)  those  who  sought  to  construct  a  new 
social  and  political  system.  These  schools  and  teachers, 
writers  and  politicians,  cannot  be  rigidly  separated  from 
each  other.  Each  overlaps  the  other,  and  most  of  them 
combine  the  characteristics  of  all  in  more  or  less  degree. 
The  most  pugnacious  of  the  critics  did  something  in  the 
way  of  reconstructing  the  intellectual  basis.  The  most  con- 
structive spirits  of  the  new  world  did  much  both  directly 
and  indirectly  to  destroy  the  old.  Critics  of  the  orthodox 
faith  were  really  destroying  the  throne  and  the  ancient 
rule,  even  when  they  least  designed  it.  Orthodox  sup- 
porters of  radical  reforms  rung  the  knell  of  the  mediaeval 
faith  as  much  as  that  of  the  mediaeval  society.  The  spirit- 
ual and  temporal  organisation  of  human  life  had  grown  up 
together ;  and  in  death  it  was  not  divided. 

All  through  the  eighteenth  century  the  intellectual 
movement  was  gathering  vitality  and  volume.  From  the 
opening  years  of  the  epoch  the  genius  of  Leibnitz  saw  the 
inevitable  effect  the  movement  must  have  upon  the  old 
society  ;  and,  in  his  memorable  prophecy  of  the  Revolution 
at  hand  (1704),  he  warned  the  chiefs  of  that  society  to 
prepare  for  the  storm.  For  three  generations  France 
seemed  to  live  only  in  thought.  Action  descended  to  the 
vilest  and  most  petty  level  which  her  history  had  ever 
reached.  From  the  death  of  Colbert,  in  1683,  until  the 
ministry  of  Turgot,  in  1774,  France  seemed  to  have  lost 
the  race  of  great  statesmen,  and  to  be  delivered  over  to 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1789    DID.  IQ9 

the  intriguer  and  the  sycophant.  Well  may  the  historian 
say  that  in  passing  from  the  politicians  of  the  reign  of 
Louis  xv.  to  the  thinkers  of  the  same  epoch,  we  seem  to 
be  passing  from  the  world  of  the  pigmies  to  that  of  the 
Titans.  Into  the  world  of  ideas  France  flung  herself  with 
passion  and  with  hope.  The  wonderful  accumulation  of 
scientific  discoveries  which  followed  the  achievements  of 
Newton  reacted  powerfully  on  religious  thought,  and  even 
on  practical  policy.  Mathematics,  astronomy,  physics, 
chemistry,  biology,  began  to  assume  the  outlined  propor- 
tion of  coherent  sciences  ;  and  some  vague  sense  of  their 
connection  and  real  unity  filled  the  mind  of  all.  Out  of 
the  physical  sciences  there  emerged  a  dim  conception  of 
a  crowning  human  science,  which  it  was  the  grand  achieve- 
ment of  the  eighteenth  century  to  found.  History  ceased 
to  be  a  branch  of  literature ;  it  began  to  have  practical 
uses  for  mankind  of  to-day ;  and  slowly  it  was  recognised 
as  the  momentous  life-story  of  man,  the  autobiography  of 
the  human  race.  Europe  no  longer  absorbed  the  interest  of 
cultivated  thought.  The  unity  of  the  planet,  the  community 
of  all  who  dwell  on  it,  gave  a  new  colour  to  the  whole  range 
of  thought ;  and  as  the  old  dogmas  of  the  supernatural 
Church  began  to  lose  their  hold  on  the  mind,  the  new-born 
enthusiasm  of  humanity  began  to  fill  all  hearts. 

The  indefatigable  genius  who  was  the  acknowledged 
leader  in  the  intellectual  attack  undoubtedly  partook  in 
a  measure  of  all  the  four  elements  just  mentioned,  and 
his  true  glory  is  that,  throughout  the  whole  range  of  his 
varied  work,  this  enthusiasm  of  humanity  glows  constantly 
aflame  and  warms  his  zeal.  The  almost  unexampled  versa- 
tility and  fecundity  of  Voltaire's  mind  gave  his  contempo- 
raries the  impression  of  a  far  larger  genius  than  the  test  of 
time  has  been  able  to  concede  him.  His  merit  has  been 
said  to  lie  in  a  most  extraordinary  combination  of  secondary 


2OO  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

powers,  no  one  of  which  was  precisely  of  the  highest  class. 
He  was  neither  one  of  the  great  poets,  or  observers,  or 
philosophers,  or  teachers  of  men,  though  he  wielded,  and 
for  a  longer  time,  the  most  potent  literary  power  of  which 
history  tells.  Although  of  the  four  main  schools  into  which 
the  eighteenth  century  movement  may  be  grouped,  Voltaire 
was  especially  marked  out  as  the  leading  spirit  of  the 
intellectual  attack,  he  did  not  a  little  to  stimulate  the  con- 
structive task,  both  in  its  philosophical  and  in  its  social 
side.  It  is  from  Voltaire's  visit  to  England  in  1726  that 
we  must  date  the  opening  of  the  grand  movement  of  '89. 
The  accumulating  series  of  impulses  which  at  last  forced 
on  the  opening  of  the  States-General  at  Versailles  began 
with  English  ideas,  English  teachers,  and  English  or 
American  traditions. 

At  the  same  time  (1724-1731)  was  formed  in  the  Place 
Venddme  with  the  aid  of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  the  confrater- 
nity of  reformers,  to  whom  he  gave  the  English  name  of 
club.  This  was  the  first  appearance  in  France  of  an 
institution  which  has  played  so  large  a  part  in  the  history 
of  Europe,  which  is  destined  yet  to  play  an  even  larger 
part.  The  Abbe"  Alari,  the  Abbe"  Saint-Pierre,  the  Mar- 
quis d'Argenson,  and  their  companions  in  the  Club  de 
1' Entresol  were  already,  sixty  years  before  the  opening  of 
Revolution,  covering  the  ground  of  the  social  ideas  of 
'89,  in  a  vague,  timid,  and  tentative  manner,  it  may  be, 
but  withal  in  a  spirit  of  enthusiastic  zeal  of  the  better  time 
they  were  not  destined  to  see. 

Of  this  group  of  premature  reformers,  of  these  precur- 
sors and  heralds  of  '89,  none  is  more  illustrious  than  the 
Marquis  d'Argenson,  nor  is  any  book  more  memorable 
than  his  Reflections  on  the  Government  of  France  (1739). 
Here  we  have  the  germ  of  the  democratic  absolutism  which 
has  again  and  again  reasserted  its  strength  in  France  : 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1/89    DID.  2OI 

here  are  the  germs  of  the  local  administration  ;  here  is  the 
first  proposal  for  the  symmetrical  system  of  eighty-six 
departments  which  since  1790  replaced  the  ancient  prov- 
inces with  all  their  anomalies.  Here  also  is  the  repudia- 
tion by  an  illustrious  noble  of  the  privileges  of  nobility, 
the  condemnation  of  local  restrictions  on  trade,  and  the 
dream  of  a  new  France  where  personal  equality  should 
reign,  and  where  the  cultivator  of  the  soil  should  be  lord 
of  the  land  he  tilled. 

The  chief  spirit  of  the  social  and  political  destructives 
was  as  obviously  Rousseau  as  Voltaire  had  been  the  chief 
spirit  of  the  religious  destructives.  Our  business  for  the 
moment  is  with  neither  of  these  schools  and  with  neither 
of  these  famous  men.  As  all  heterodoxy  seemed  to  be 
latent  in  the  mordant  criticism  of  Voltaire,  so  all  subse- 
quent political  anarchy  seems  to  be  concentrated  in  the 
morbid  passion  of  Rousseau.  But  though  Rousseau  must  be 
regarded  as  in  all  essentials  a  destructive,  there  are  many 
ways  in  which  he  had  a  share  in  the  constructive  movement 
of  '89.  In  the  splendour  of  his  pleading  for  education,  for 
respecting  the  dignity  of  the  citizen,  in  his  passion  for  art, 
in  his  pathetic  dreams  of  an  ideal  simplicity  of  life,  in  his 
spiritual  Utopia  of  a  higher  and  more  humane  humanity, 
prophet  of  anarchy  as  he  was,  Rousseau  has  here  and 
there  added  a  stone  to  the  edifice  we  are  still  building 
to-day. 

When  we  turn  to  the  constructive  schools,  there  we  find 
Diderot  supreme  in  the  intellectual  world,  Turgot  in  the 
political ;  whilst  Condorcet  is  the  disciple  and  complement 
of  both.  With  the  purely  philosophical  work  of  any  of 
these  three  we  are  not  now  concerned.  Our  interest  is 
entirely  with  the  social  and  political  question.  And  at 
first  sight  it  may  seem  that  Diderot  has  no  share  in  any 
but  the  philosophical.  But  this  most  universal  genius  had 


2O2  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

a  mind  open  to  all  sides  of  the  human  problem.  His  grand 
task  the  Encyclopedic  (and  we  may  remember  that  the  first 
idea  of  it  came  from  an  English  Encyclopaedia,  which  it 
was  proposed  to  translate),  the  Encyclopedic  is  largely,  and 
indeed  mainly,  concerned  with  economic  and  social  mat- 
ters. Throughout  it  runs  the  potent  principle  of  the  unity 
of  man's  knowledge,  of  man's  life,  and  of  the  whole  human 
race.  Diderot  does  far  more  than  discuss  abstract  ques- 
tions of  science.  He  traces  out  the  ramifications  of  science 
into  the  minutest  and  humblest  operations  of  industry. 
In  the  Encyclopaedia  we  have  installed  for  the  first  time  on 
authority  that  conception  of  modern  times  —  the  marriage 
of  Science  with  Industry.  Machines,  trades,  manufactures, 
implements,  tools,  processes  were  each  in  turn  the  object 
of  Diderot's  enthusiastic  study.  He  and  his  comrades, 
men  like  Turgot,  d'Alembert,  Condorcet,  felt  that  the  true 
destiny  of  man  was  the  industrial.  They  strove  to  place 
labour  on  its  right  level,  to  dignify  its  task,  and  to  glorify 
its  mission.  Never  had  philosophy  been  greater  than 
when  she  girt  up  her  robes,  penetrated  into  the  workshop, 
and  shed  her  light  upon  the  patient  toil  of  the  handicrafts- 
man. For  the  first  time  in  modern  history  thought  and 
science  took  labour  to  their  arms.  Industry  received  its 
true  honour,  and  was  installed  in  a  new  sphere.  It  was  a 
momentous  step  in  the  progress  of  society  as  much  as  in 
the  progress  of  thought. 

Chief  of  all  the  political  reformers,  in  many  things  the 
noblest  type  of  the  men  of  '89,  is  the  great  Turgot ;  he, 
who  if  France  could  have  been  spared  a  revolution,  was 
the  one  man  that  could  have  saved  her.  After  him, 
Necker,  a  much  inferior  man,  though  with  equally  good 
intentions,  attempted  the  same  task ;  and  the  years  from 
1774-1781  sufficed  to  show  that  reform  without  revolution 
was  impossible.  But  the  twenty  years  of  noble  effort, 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1789    DID.  2O3 

from  the  hour  when  Turgot  became  intendant  of  Limoges 
in  1761  until  the  fall  of  Necker's  ministry  in  1781,  con- 
tained an  almost  complete  rehearsal,  were  a  prelude  and 
epitome,  of  the  practical  reforms  which  the  Revolution 
accomplished  after  so  much  blood  and  such  years  of  chaos. 
To  give  the  official  career  of  Turgot  would  be  a  summary 
of  the  ideas  of  '89.  The  suppression  of  the  corvee,  of  the 
restrictions  on  industry,  on  the  resources  of  locomotion, 
the  restoration  of  agriculture,  to  reduce  the  finances  to 
order,  to  diminish  public  debt,  to  establish  local  municipal 
life,  to  reorganise  the  chaotic  administration,  to  remove 
the  exemptions  of  the  noble  and  ecclesiastical  orders,  to 
suppress  the  monastic  orders,  to  equalise  the  taxation,  to 
establish  a  scientific  and  uniform  code  of  law,  a  scientific 
and  uniform  scale  of  weights  and  measures,  to  reform  the 
feudal  land  law,  to  abolish  the  feudal  gilds  and  antiquated 
corporations  whose  obsolete  pretensions  crushed  industry, 
to  recall  the  Protestants,  to  establish  entire  freedom  of  con- 
science, to  guarantee  complete  liberty  of  thought;  lastly, 
to  establish  a  truly  national  system  of  education  —  such 
were  the  plans  of  Turgot  which  for  two  short  years  he 
struggled  to  accomplish  with  heroic  tenacity  and  elevation 
of  spirit.  Those  two  years,  from  1774—1776,  are  at  once 
the  brightest  and  the  saddest  in  the  modern  history  of 
France.  For  almost  the  first  time,  and  certainly  for  the 
last  time,  a  great  philosopher,  who  was  also  a  great  states- 
man, the  last  French  statesman  of  the  old  order,  held  for  a 
moment  almost  absolute  power.  It  was  a  gigantic  task, 
and  a  giant  was  called  in  to  accomplish  it.  But  against 
folly  even  the  gods  contend  in  vain.  And  before  folly, 
combined  with  insatiable  selfishness,  lust,  greed,  and  arro- 
gance, the  heroic  Turgot  fell.  They  refused  him  his 
bloodless,  orderly,  scientific  Revolution;  and  the  bloody, 
stormy,  spasmodic  Revolution  began. 


2O4  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

To  recall  Turgot  is  to  recall  Condorcet,  the  equal  of 
Turgot  as  thinker,  if  inferior  to  Turgot  as  statesman. 
Around  the  mind  and  nature  of  Condorcet  there  lingers 
the  halo  of  a  special  grace.  Sprung  from  an  old  baronial 
family  with  bigoted  prejudices  of  feudal  right,  the  young 
noble,  from  his  youth,  broke  through  the  opposition  of  his 
order  to  devote  himself  to  a  life  of  thought.  Spotless  in 
his  life,  calm,  reserved,  warm  hearted  and  tender,  '  the  vol- 
cano covered  with  snow '  that  flamed  in  his  breast,  had 
never  betrayed  him  to  an  outburst  of  jealousy,  vanity,  ill- 
humour,  or  extravagance.  The  courtly  and  polished  aris- 
tocrat, without  affectation  and  without  hysterics,  bore 
himself  as  one  of  the  simplest  of  the  people.  The  privi- 
leges of  the  old  system,  which  were  his  birthright,  filled 
him  with  a  sense  of  unmixed  abhorrence.  His  scepticism, 
vehement  as  it  was,  did  not  spring  from  intellectual  pride 
or  from  turbulent  vanity.  He  disbelieves  in  orthodoxy  out 
of  genuine  thirst  for  truth,  and  denounces  superstition  out 
of  no  alloy  of  feeling  save  that  of  burning  indignation  at 
its  evil  works.  The  Life  of  Turgot  by  Condorcet,  1787, 
might  serve  indeed  as  prologue  to  the  memorable  drama 
which  opens  in  1789.  It  was  most  fitting  that  the  mighty 
movement  should  be  heralded  by  the  tale  of  the  greatest 
statesman  of  the  age  of  Louis  xvi.,  told  by  one  of  its  chief 
thinkers.  And  the  fine  lines  of  Lucan,  which  Condorcet 
placed  as  a  motto  on  the  title-page  of  his  Life  of  Turgot, 
may  serve  as  the  device,  not  of  Turgot  alone,  but  of  Con- 
dorcet himself,  and  indeed  of  the  higher  spirits  of  '89 
together  — 

'  Secta  fuit  servare  modum,  finemque  tenere, 
Naturamque  sequi,  patriaeque  impendere  vitam  ; 
Nee  sibi,  sed  toti  genitum  se  credere  mundo.' 

'  The  only  party  they  acknowledged  was  the  rule  of  good 


WHAT    THE    REVOLUTION    OF    1789    DID. 

sense,  and  to  keep  firm  to  their  purpose,  to  submit  to  the 
teaching  of  Nature's  law,  and  to  offer  up  their  lives  for 
their  country — holding  that  man  is  born  not  for  himself, 
but  for  humanity  in  the  sum.'  He  who  would  understand 
what  men  mean  by  '  the  ideas  of  '89 '  should  mark,  learn, 
and  inwardly  digest  those  two  small  books  of  Condorcet, 
the  Life  of  Tin-got,  1787,  and  the  Historical  Sketch  of  the 
Progress  of  t lie  Human  Mind,  1795. 

The  annals  of  literature  have  no  more  pathetic  incident 
than  the  history  of  this  little  book  —  this  still  unfinished 
vision  of  a  brain  prematurely  cut  off.  In  the  midst  of  the 
struggle  between  Mountain  and  Gironde,  Condorcet,  who 
stood  between  both  and  who  belonged  to  neither,  he  who 
had  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Mountain  without  its  ferocity, 
the  virtues  and  culture  of  the  Girondists  without  their 
pedantic  formalism,  was  denounced  and  condemned  to  death, 
and  dragged  out  a  few  weeks  of  life  in  a  miserable  conceal- 
ment. There,  with  death  hanging  round  him,  he  calmly 
compiled  the  first  true  sketch  of  human  evolution.  Amidst 
the  chaos  and  bloodshed  he  reviews  the  history  of  mankind. 
Not  a  word  of  pain,  doubt,  bitterness,  or  reproach  is  wrung 
from  him.  He  sees  nothing  but  visions  of  a  happy  and 
glorious  future  for  the  race,  when  war  shall  cease,  and  the 
barriers  shall  fall  down  between  man  and  man,  class  and 
class,  race  and  race,  when  man  shall  pursue  a  regenerate 
life  in  human  brotherhood  and  confidence  in  truth.  In- 
dustry there  shall  be  the  common  lot,  and  the  noblest  priv- 
ilege. But  it  shall  be  brightened  to  all  by  a  common 
education,  free,  rational,  and  comprehensive,  with  a  light- 
ening of  the  burdens  of  labour  by  scientific  appliances  of 
life  and  increased  opportunity  for  culture.  '  Our  hopes,' 
he  writes,  in  that  last  lyric  chapter  of  the  little  sketch, 
'our  hopes  as  to  the  future  of  the  human  race  may  be 
summed  up  in  these  three  points  :  the  raising  of  all  nations 


2O6  THE    MEANING   OF    HISTORY. 

to  a  common  level ;  the  progress  towards  equality  in  each 
separate  people ;  and,  lastly,  the  practical  amelioration  of 
the  lot  of  man.'  'It  is  in  the  contemplation  of  such  a 
future,'  he  concludes,  'that  the  philosopher  may  find  a  safe 
asylum  in  all  troubles,  and  may  live  in  that  true  paradise, 
to  which  his  reason  may  look  forward  with  confidence,  and 
which  his  sympathy  with  humanity  may  invest  with  a  rap- 
ture of  the  purest  kind.' 

The  ink  of  these  pages  was  hardly  dry  when  the  writer 
by  death  escaped  the  guillotine  to  which  republicans  con- 
demned him  in  the  name  of  liberty.  How  many  of  us  can 
repeat  a  hundred  anecdotes  of  the  guillotine,  of  its  victims, 
and  its  professors,  yet  how  few  of  us  have  seriously  taken 
to  heart  the  Sketch  of  Human  Progress!  The  blood  is 
dried  up,  but  the  book  lives,  and  human  progress  continues 
on  the  lines  there  so  prophetically  traced.  '  I  have  studied 
history  long,'  says  de  Tocqueville,  'yet  I  have  never  read 
of  any  revolution  wherein  there  may  be  found  men  of 
patriotism  so  sincere,  of  such  true  devotion  of  self,  of  more 
entire  grandeur  of  spirit.' 


CHAPTER  VII. 

FRANCE    IN    IS      AND 


THE  year  of  centenaries  has  brought  us  no  memento 
more  significant  than  the  timely  reissue  of  Arthur  Young's 
Travels  in  France  in  lySf-Sg.2  Europe  has  seen  in  this 
century  nothing  more  striking,  and  hardly  any  single  thing 
more  entirely  blessed,  than  the  transfiguration  of  rural 
France  from  its  state  under  the  ancient  monarchy  to  its 
state  under  the  new  republic.  By  good  luck  an  English 
traveller,  with  rare  opportunities  and  almost  a  touch  of 
genius,  traversed  every  province  just  on  the  eve  of  the 
great  crisis,  and  left  to  mankind  a  vivid  picture  of  all  he 
saw.  'Vehement,  plain-spoken  Arthur  Young,'  says  Car- 
lyle,  who,  in  his  lurid  chapter  on  the  '  General  Overturn,' 
has  made  household  words  out  of  several  of  Arthur's  his- 
toric sayings.  'That  wise  and  honest  traveller,'  says  John 
Morley,  perhaps,  with  rather  excessive  praise,  'with  his 
luminous  criticism  of  the  most  important  side  of  the  Revo- 
lution, worth  a  hundred  times  more  than  Burke,  Paine,  and 
Mackintosh  all  put  together.' 

And  now  a  lady  who  has  seen  more  of  France  than  even 
Arthur  Young,  Miss  Betham-Edwards,  has  given  us  an 
excellent  edition  of  the  famous  Travels,  so  long  practically 

1The  Forum,  New  York,  vol.  ix.     March  1890. 

2  Travels  in  France,  by  Arthur  Young,  during  the  years  1  787,  1  788,  1  789, 
with  an  Introduction,  Biographical  Sketch,  and  Notes,  by  M.  Betham- 
Edwards.  London  :  G.  Bell  and  Sons,  1889.  Bohn's  Standard  Library,  N.S.; 
also  France  of  To-day,  a  survey  comparative  and  retrospective,  by  M.  Betham- 
Edwards.  London:  Rivingtons.  2  vols.  1892-94. 

207 


2O8  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

inaccessible,  with  notes,  illustrations,  references,  and  a 
vignette  picture  of  rural  France  in  1889  such  as  old 
Arthur  himself  might  have  limned,  had  he  returned  to 
earth  and  to  France  to  see  the  great  Exhibition.  The 
contrast,  as  we  look  first  on  this  picture  and  then  on  that, 
is  the  transition  we  find  in  a  dream  or  a  fairy  tale.  It  is 
as  though  one  rose  from  the  dead.  We  see  the  sombre, 
haggard,  crushed  French  peasant  of  Languedoc,  Poitou, 
or  Franche  Comt6,  that  Lazarus  whom  the  old  system 
swathed  in  cerecloth  and  entombed,  starting  forth  into  life 
from  his  bonds,  and  returning  to  his  home,  to  activity,  and 
to  freedom.  It  is  the  Revolution  that  has  worked  this 
miracle.  This  is  the  only  work  of  the  Revolution  that  is 
wholly  blessed.  Here,  at  any  rate,  it  has  destroyed  almost 
nothing  that  was  good,  and  has  founded  little  that  is  evil. 
'The  Revolution,'  says  the  editor  of  these  Travels,  'in  a 
few  years  metamorphosed  entire  regions.' 

What  life,  what  heart,  what  ring  there  was  in  the  racy 
sayings  of  the  fine  old  boy  !  Every  one  knows  that  sharp 
word  wrung  from  him  even  while  he  was  the  guest  of  the 
Duke  de  la  Rochefoucauld  :  'Whenever  you  stumble  on  a 
grand  seigneur,  you  are  sure  to  find  his  property  a  desert.' 
The  signs  of  the  greatness  of  a  grand seigneur 'are  '  wastes, 
deserts,  fern,  ling.'  '  Oh  !  if  I  was  the  legislator  of  France 
for  a  day,  I  would  make  such  great  lords  skip  again.' 
'  The  crop  of  this  country  is  princes  of  the  blood ;  that  is 
to  say,  hares,  pheasants,  deer,  boars.'  Schoolboys  in  France 
can  repeat  the  historic  passage  about  the  woman  near 
Mars-la-Tour,  aged  twenty-eight,  but  so  bent  and  furrowed 
and  hardened  by  labour  that  she  looked  sixty  or  seventy, 
as  she  groaned  out :  '  Sir,  the  taxes  and  the  dues  are  crush- 
ing us  to  death  ! '  No  one,  says  he,  can  imagine  what  the 
French  peasant  woman  has  come  to  look  under  grinding 
poverty.  He  tells  of  '  some  things  that  called  themselves 


FRANCE    IN    1789   AND    1889.  2OQ 

women,  but  in  reality  were  walking  dunghills';  'girls  and 
women  without  shoes  or  stockings.'  '  The  ploughmen  at 
their  work  have  neither  sabots,  nor  feet  to  their  stockings. 
This  is  a  poverty  that  strikes  at  the  root  of  national  pros- 
perity.' And  then  comes  that  scathing  phrase  which  rings 
in  the  ears  of  Englishmen  to-day  :  '  It  reminds  me  of  the 
misery  of  Ireland.' 

The  poor  people's  habitations  he  finds  in  Brittany  to 
be  '  miserable  heaps  of  dirt.'  There,  as  so  often  else- 
where in  France,  no  glass  window,  scarcely  any  light ; 
the  women  furrowed  without  age  by  labour.  '  One-third 
of  what  I  have  seen  of  this  province  seems  uncultivated, 
and  nearly  all  of  it  in  misery.'  'Nothing  but  privileges 
and  poverty.'  And  every  one  remembers  what  these 
privileges  were  — '  these  tortures  of  the  peasantry '  he 
calls  them  —  of  which  in  one  sentence  he  enumerates 
twenty-eight. 

And  now,  in  1889,  turn  to  these  same  provinces,  to 
the  third  generation  in  descent  from  these  very  peasants. 
'  The  desert  that  saddened  Arthur  Young's  eyes/  writes 
Miss  Betham-Edwards  to-day,  'may  now  be  described  as  a 
land  of  Goshen,  overflowing  with  milk  and  honey.'  'The 
land  was  well  stocked  and  cultivated,  the  people  were 
neatly  and  appropriately  dressed,  and  the  signs  of  general 
contentment  and  well-being  delightful  to  contemplate.' 
In  one  province,  a  million  acres  of  waste  land  have  been 
brought  into  cultivation.  In  five  or  six  years,  wrote  the 
historian  Mignet, '  the  Revolution  quadrupled  the  resources 
of  civilisation.'  Where  Arthur  Young  saw  the  miserable 
peasant  woman,  Miss  Betham-Edwards  tells  us  that  to- 
day the  farmers'  daughters  have  for  portions  '  several 
thousand  pounds.'  What  Arthur  Young  calls  an  'unim- 
proved, poor,  and  ugly  country,'  Miss  Betham-Edwards 
now  finds  to  be  '  one  vast  garden.'  In  the  landes,  where 
O 


2IO  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

the  traveller  saw  nearly  a  hundred  miles  of  continuous 
waste,  700,000  acres  have  been  fertilised  by  canals,  and  a 
very  small  portion  remains  in  the  state  in  which  he  found 
it.  '  Maine  and  Anjou  have  the  appearance  of  deserts,' 
writes  the  traveller  of  1789.  'Sunny,  light-hearted,  dance- 
loving  Anjou'  appears  to  the  traveller  of  1889  a  model  of 
prosperity  and  happiness.  Where  he  found  the  peasants 
living  in  caves  underground,  she  finds  neat  homesteads 
costing  more  than  6000  francs  to  build.  In  Dauphine, 
where  he  finds,  in  1789,  mountains  waste  or  in  a  great 
measure  useless,  she  finds,  in  1889,  choice  vineyards  that 
sell  at  25,000  francs  per  acre. 

And  what  has  done  all  this  ?  The  prophetic  soul  of 
Arthur  Young  can  tell  us,  though  a  hundred  years  were 
needed  to  make  his  hopes  a  reality.  His  words  have 
passed  into  a  household  phrase  where  the  English  tongue 
reaches:  'The  magic  of  property  turns  sand  to  gold.' 
'The  inhabitants  of  this  village  deserve  encouragement 
for  their  industry,'  he  writes  of  Sauve,  'and  if  I  was  a 
French  minister  they  should  have  it.  They  would  soon 
turn  all  the  deserts  around  them  into  gardens.'  '  Give  a 
man,'  he  adds,  in  a  phrase  which  is  now  a  proverb,  'the 
secure  possession  of  a  bleak  rock,  and  he  will  turn  it  into 
a  garden ;  give  him  a  nine  years'  lease  of  a  garden,  and 
he  will  convert  it  into  a  desert.'  What  has  made  all  this 
misery  ?  he  cries  again  and  again  ;  what  has  blighted  this 
magnificent  country,  and  crushed  this  noble  people  ?  Mis- 
government,  bad  laws,  cruel  customs,  wanton  selfishness  of 
the  rich,  the  powerful,  and  the  privileged.  Nothing  was 
ever  said  more  true.  Arthur  Young's  good  legislator 
came  even  sooner  than  he  dared  to  hope,  armed  with  a 
force  more  tremendous  than  he  could  conceive.  It  was  a 
minister  greater  than  any  Turgot,  or  Necker,  or  Mirabeau  ; 
who  served  a  sovereign  more  powerful  than  Louis  or 


FRANCE    IN     1789    AND    1889.  211 

Napoleon.  His  sovereign  was  the  Revolution ;  the  min- 
ister was  the  new  system.  And  the  warm-hearted  English 
gentleman  lived  to  see  his  '  great  lords  skip  again  '  some- 
what too  painfully.  The  storm  has  passed,  the  blood  is 
washed  out ;  but  the  '  red  fool-fury,  of  the  Seine '  has  made 
rural  France  the  paradise  of  the  peasant. 

Let  us  take  a  typical  bit  of  the  country  here  and  there 
and  compare  its  state  in  1789  and  in  1889.  From  Paris 
and  Orleans  Arthur  Young,  in  1787,  journeyed  southward 
through  Berri  and  the  Limousin  to  Toulouse.  His  diary 
is  one  cry  of  pity.  '  The  fields  are  scenes  of  pitiable  man- 
agement, as  the  houses  are  of  misery.'  'Heaven  grant 
me  patience  while  I  see  a  country  thus  neglected,  and  for- 
give me  the  oaths  I  swear  at  the  absence  and  ignorance 
of  the  possessors.'  'The  husbandry  poor  and  the  people 
miserable.'  '  The  poor  people  who  cultivate  the  soil  here 
are  metayers,  that  is,  men  who  hire  the  soil  without  ability 
to  stock  it  —  a  miserable  system  that  perpetuates  poverty 
and  excludes  instruction.' 

Turn  to  our  traveller  of  1889.  Berri,  says  Miss  Betham- 
Edwards,  has  been  transformed  under  a  sound  land  system. 
It  has  indeed  a  poor  soil ;  but,  even  in  the  'triste  Sologne? 
plantations,  irrigation  canals,  and  improved  methods  of 
agriculture  are  transforming  this  region.  So  rapid  is  the 
progress  that  George  Sand,  who  died  but  the  other  day, 
would  hardly  recognise  the  country  she  has  described  so 
well.  Here  and  there  may  be  seen,  now  used  as  an  out- 
house, one  of  those  bare,  windowless  cabins  which  shocked 
Arthur  Young,  and  close  at  hand  the  'neat,  airy,  solid 
dwellings '  the  peasant  owners  have  built  for  themselves. 
Here  Miss  Betham-Edwards  visited  newly-made  farms, 
with  their  spick-and-span  buildings,  the  whole  having  the 
appearance  of  a  little  settlement  in  the  Far  West.  The 
holdings  vary  from  6  to  30  acres,  their  owners  possessing 


212  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

a  capital  of  5000  to  8000  and  even  25,000  francs,  the  land 
well  stocked  and  cultivated,  the  people  well  dressed,  and 
signs  of  general  content  and  well-being  delightful  to  con- 
template. And  as  to  metayage,  'that  miserable  system 
which  perpetuates  poverty,'  Miss  Betham-Edwards  finds  it 
now  one  of  the  chief  factors  of  the  agricultural  progress  of 
France,  creating  cordial  relations  between  landlord  and 
tenant.  The  secret  of  this  curious  conflict  between  two 
most  competent  observers  is  this:  metayage  —  the  system 
under  which  the  owner  of  the  soil  finds  land,  stock,  and 
implements,  the  tiller  of  the  farm  finds  manual  labour,  and 
all  produce  is  equally  shared  —  depends  for  its  fair  work- 
ing upon  just  laws,  equality  before  the  law,  absence  of  any 
privilege  in  the  owner,  and  good  understanding  as  between 
men  who  alike  respect  each  other.  With  these,  it  is 
an  excellent  system  of  farming,  very  favourable  to  the 
labourer ;  without  these,  it  may  almost  reduce  him  to 
serfdom.  It  may  thus  be  one  of  the  best,  or  one  of  the 
worst,  of  all  systems  of  husbandry.  As  Arthur  Young 
saw  it  under  the  ancient  system  of  privileged  orders,  it 
was  almost  as  bad  as  an  Irish  tenancy  at  will.  Under  the 
new  system  of  post-revolutionary  equality,  it  has  given 
prosperity  to  large  tracts  in  France. 

From  Autun  in  Burgundy,  Arthur  Young  travelled 
across  the  Bourbonnais  and  the  Nivernais,  and  he  found 
the  country 'villainously  cultivated';  when  he  sees  such 
a  country  'in  the  hands  of  starving  metayers,  instead  of 
fat  farmers,'  he  knows  not  how  to  pity  the  seigneurs. 
To-day,  his  editor  finds  'fat  farmers'  innumerable,  for 
metayage  has  greatly  advanced  the  condition  of  the  peas- 
ants. The  country  that  lies  between  the  mouths  of  the 
Garonne  and  the  Loire  is  precisely  that  part  of  his  journey 
which  wrings  from  Arthur  Young  his  furious  invective 
against  the  great  lords  whom  he  wished  he  could  make 


FRANCE    IN    1789    AND    1889.  213 

'to  skip  again.'  Now,  the  Gironde,  the  Charente,  and  La 
Vendee  are  thriving,  rich  districts,  intersected  with  rail- 
ways ;  '  and,  owing  to  the  indefatigable  labours  of  peasant 
owners,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  acres  of  waste  land 
have  been  put  under  cultivation.' 

Or  turn  to  Brittany,  which  Arthur  Young  calls  'a  mis- 
erable province  '  ;  '  husbandry  not  much  further  advanced 
than  among  the  Hurons'  ;  'the  people  almost  as  wild  as 
their  country';  'mud  houses,  no  windows';  'a  hideous 
heap  of  wretchedness' — all  through  'the  execrable  max- 
ims of  despotism,  or  the  equally  detestable  prejudices  of  a 
feudal  nobility.'  And  this  is  the  rich,  thriving,  laborious, 
and  delightful  Brittany  which  our  tourists  love,  where  Miss 
Betham-Edwards  tells  us  of  scientific  farming,  artificial 
manures,  machinery,  'the  granary  of  Western  France,' 
market  gardens,  of  fabulous  value,  and  a  great  agricultural 
college,  one  of  the  most  important  in  Europe. 

Maine  and  Anjou,  through  which  the  Loire  flows  below 
Tours,  were  deserts  to  Arthur  Young.  Every  tourist 
knows  that  these  provinces  now  look  as  rich  and  prosper- 
ous as  any  spot  in  Europe.  Miss  Betham-Edwards  gives 
us  an  almost  idyllic  picture  of  an  Angevin  farm-house, 
with  its  supper,  merriment,  and  dance  ;  and  tells  of  Ange- 
vin peasants  building  themselves  villas  with  eight  rooms, 
a  flower  garden,  parlour,  kitchen,  offices,  and  four  airy 
bedrooms.  'The  peasant  wastes  nothing  and  spends  lit- 
tle ;  he  possesses  stores  of  homespun  linen,  home-made 
remedies,  oil,  vinegar,  honey,  cider,  and  wine  of  his  own 
producing.'  'The  poorest  eat  asparagus,  green  peas,  and 
strawberries  every  day  in  season  ;  and  as  everybody  owns 
crops,  nobody  pilfers  his  neighbours'.'  Universal  owner- 
ship gives  absolute  security  to  property,  and  pauperism  is 
unknown. 

As  in  Berri,  as  in    the    Limousin,   Poitou,  Anjou,  and 


214  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

Brittany,  so  elsewhere  throughout  France,  we  find  the 
same  astounding  contrast  between  the  tale  told  by  the 
traveller  of  1789  and  the  traveller  of  1889.  Paris  amazes 
Arthur  Young  by  its  dirtiness  and  discomfort,  and  the 
silence  and  stagnation  of  life  the  instant  he  passes  out  of 
its  narrow  crooked  streets !  To  those  accustomed  to  the 
animation  and  rapid  movement  of  England,  says  he,  it 
is  not  possible  to  describe  '  the  dulness  and  stupidity  of 
France  ! '  To  read  these  words  in  the  year  of  the  great 
Exhibition,  1889,  with  its  26,000,000  tickets  bought  by 
sight-seers !  In  Champagne  he  pronounces  his  famous 
diatribe  against  government.  Now,  we  all  know  Cham- 
pagne to  be  a  thriving  and  wealthy  country.  It  was  in 
Franche  Comte"  that'Arthur  Young,  being  surrounded  by 
an  angry  crowd,  made  his  famous  speech  to  them  about 
French  and  English  taxation,  and  explained  the  difference 
between  a  seigneur  in  France  and  in  England.  On  which 
side  would  the  difference  lie,  if  he  rose  to  make  his  speech 
in  the  Doubs  to-day  ?  Arthur  Young  crosses  France  from 
Alsace  to  Auvergne  before  he  sees  a  field  of  clover ;  but 
in  France  to-day  clover  is  as  common  as  it  is  in  England. 
Old  Marseilles  he  thinks  close,  ill-built,  and  dirty ;  and 
'the  port  itself  is  a  horse  pond.'  He  cannot  find  a  con- 
veyance between  Marseilles  and  Nice.  Such  great  cities 
in  France,  he  says,  have  not  the  hundredth  part  of  the 
means  of  communication  common  in  much  smaller  places 
in  England.  He  passes  into  the  mountain  region  of 
Upper  Savoy  ;  and  there  he  finds  the  people  at  their  ease, 
and  the  land  productive,  in  spite  of  the  harsh  climate  and 
the  barren  soil.  He  asks  the  reason,  and  he  learns  that 
there  are  no  seigneurs  in  Upper  Savoy.  In  Lower  Savoy 
he  finds  the  people  poor  and  miserable,  for  there  stands 
a  carcan,  a  seigneurial  standard,  with  a  chain  and  a  heavy 
collar,  an  emblem  of  the  slavery  of  the  people. 


FRANCE    IN    1789    AND    1889.  215 

At  Lyons  he  meets  the  Rolands,  though  he  failed  to 
recognise  the  romantic  genius  that  lay  still  hidden  in  the 
young  and  beautiful  wife  of  the  austere  financier.  At 
Lyons  he  is  assured  that  '  the  state  of  manufacture  is 
melancholy  to  the  last  degree.'  And,  as  the  quarter  now 
known  as  Perrache  did  not  yet  exist,  he  finds  the  city  itself 
badly  situated.  As  he  passes  along  the  Riviera  from 
Antibes  to  Nice,  he  is  driven  to  walk,  for  want  of  a  con- 
veyance, and  a  woman  carries  his  baggage  on  an  ass.  At 
Cannes  there  is  no  post-house,  carriage,  horses,  or  mules, 
and  he  has  to  walk  through  nine  miles  of  waste  !  And  so 
he  at  last  gets  back  to  Paris.  There  he  hears  Mirabeau 
thunder  in  the  National  Assembly ;  meets  the  King  and 
Queen,  La  Fayette,  Barnave,  Sieyes,  Condorcet,  and  the 
chiefs  of  the  Revolution  ;  and  is  taken  to  the  Jacobin  Club, 
of  which  he  is  duly  installed  as  a  member.  And  this 
wonderful  book  ends  with  a  chapter  of  general  reflections 
on  the  Revolution,  which  go  more  deeply  down  to  the  root 
of  the  matter,  John  Morley  has  said,  than  all  that  Burke, 
Paine,  and  Mackintosh  piled  up  in  so  many  eloquent 
periods. 

The  Revolution  as  a  whole  would  carry  us  far  afield. 
In  these  few  pages  we  are  dealing  with  the  great  transfor- 
mation that  it  wrought  in  the  condition  of  the  peasant. 
It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  part  of  the  wonderful  differ- 
ence between  the  peasant  of  the  last  century  and  the  peas- 
ant of  to-day,  is  due  to  the  vast  material  advancement 
common  to  the  civilised  world.  Railroads,  steam  factories, 
telegraphs,  the  enormous  increase  in  population,  in  manu- 
factures, commerce,  and  inventions  were  not  products  of 
the  '  principles  of  '89,'  nor  of  the  Convention,  nor  of  the 
Jacobin  Club.  All  Europe  has  grown,  America  has  grown 
almost  miraculously,  and  France  has  grown  with  both. 
But  the  political  lesson  of  Arthur  Young's  journey  is  this  : 


2l6  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

the  poverty  and  the  desolation  which  he  saw  in  1789  were 
directly  due,  as  he  so  keenly  felt,  not  to  the  country,  not 
to  the  husbandmen,  not  to  ignorance  or  to  indolence  in  the 
people,  not  to  mere  neglect,  weakness,  or  stupidity  in  the 
central  government,  but  directly  to  bad  laws,  cruel  privi- 
leges, and  an  oppressive  system  of  tyranny.  Arthur 
Young  found  an  uncommonly  rich  soil,  a  glorious  climate, 
a  thrifty,  ingenious,  and  laborious  people,  a  strong  central 
government  that,  in  places  and  at  times,  could  make  mag- 
nificent roads,  bridges,  canals,  ports ;  and  when  a  Turgot, 
or  a  Liancourt,  or  a  de  Turbilly  had  a  free  hand,  a  country 
which  could  be  made  one  of  the  richest  on  the  earth.  What 
Arthur  Young  saw,  with  the  eye  of  true  insight,  was,  that 
so  soon  as  these  evil  laws  and  this  atrocious  system  of 
land  tenure  were  removed,  France  would  be  one  of  the 
finest  countries  in  the  world.  And  Arthur  Young,  as  we 
see,  was  right. 

Another  point  is  this  :  to  Arthur  Young,  the  Suffolk 
farmer  of  1789,  everything  he  sees  in  the  peasantry  and 
husbandry  of  France  appears  miserably  inferior  to  the 
peasantry  and  husbandry  of  England.  France  is  a  coun- 
try far  worse  cultivated  than  England,  its  agricultural 
produce  miserably  less ;  its  life,  animation,  and  means  of 
communication  ludicrously  inferior  to  those  of  England  ; 
its  farmers  in  penury,  its  labourers  starving,  its  resources 
barbarous,  compared  with  those  of  England.  In  an  Eng- 
lish village  more  meat,  he  learns,  is  eaten  in  a  week,  than 
in  a  French  village  in  a  year ;  the  clothing,  food,  home,  and 
intelligence  of  the  English  labourer  are  far  above  those  of 
the  French  labourer.  The  country  inns  are  infinitely  bet- 
ter in  England ;  there  is  ten  times  the  circulation,  the 
wealth,  the  comfort  in  an  English  rural  district ;  the 
English  labourer  is  a  free  man,  the  French  labourer  little 
more  than  a  serf. 


FRANCE  IN  1789  AND  1889.  2 1/ 

Can  we  say  the  same  thing  of  1889?  Obviously  not- 
The  contrast  to-day  is  reversed.  It  is  the  English  labourer 
who  is  worse  housed,  worse  fed,  clothed,  taught  ;  who  has 
nothing  of  his  own,  who  can  never  save ;  to  whom  the 
purchase  of  an  acre  of  land  is  as  much  an  impossibility  as 
of  a  diamond  necklace,  and  who  may  no  more  think  to  own 
a  dairy  than  to  own  a  race  horse  ;  who  follows  the  plough 
for  two  shillings  a  day,  and  ends,  when  he  drops,  in  the 
workhouse.  England  has  increased  in  these  hundred  years 
far  more  than  France  in  population,  in  wealth,  in  com- 
merce, in  manufactures,  in  dominion,  in  resources,  in 
general  material  prosperity  —  in  all  but  in  the  condition  of 
her  rural  labourer.  In  that  she  has  gone  back,  perhaps 
positively  ;  but  relatively  it  is  certain  she  has  gone  very 
far  back.  The  English  traveller  in  France  to-day  is  amazed 
at  the  wealth,  independence,  and  comfort  of  the  French 
peasant.  To  Miss  Betham-Edwards,  who  knows  France 
well,  it  is  a  land  of  Goshen,  flowing  with  milk  and  honey  ; 
the  life  of  the  peasant  of  Anjou,  Brie,  and  La  Vendee  is 
one  of  idyllic  prosperity  '  delightful  to  behold.'  The  land 
tenure  of  England  in  1789  was,  as  Young  told  the  mob  in 
the  Doubs,  far  in  advance  of  that  of  France  —  as  far  as 
that  of  France  of  1889  is  in  advance  of  that  of  England 
now.  Our  English  great  lords  have  not  yet  begun  'to 
skip  again.'  Land  tenure  in  England  to-day  is  essentially 
the  same  as  it  was  in  1789.  In  France  it  has  been  wholly 
transformed  by  the  Revolution. 

There  are  in  France  now  some  eight  million  persons  who 
own  the  soil,  the  great  mass  of  whom  are  peasants.  It  is 
well  known  that  the  Revolution  did  not  create  this  peasant 
land-ownership,  but  that  in  part  it  goes  back  to  the  earliest 
times  of  French  history.  Turgot,  Necker,  de  Tocqueville, 
and  a  succession  of  historians  have  abundantly  proved  the 
fact.  Arthur  Young  entirely  recognises  the  truth,  and 


2l8  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

tells  us  that  one-third  of  the  soil  of  France  was  already  the 
property  of  the  peasant.  This  estimate  has  been  adopted 
by  good  French  authorities  ;  but  Miss  Betham-Edwards 
considers  it  an  over-statement,  and  holds  that  the  true 
proportion  in  1789  was  one-fourth.  In  any  case  it  is  now 
much  more  than  one-half.  Not  but  that  there  is  now  in 
France  a  very  great  number  also  of  large  estates,  and  some 
that  are  immense  when  compared  with  the  standard  of 
England  proper.  It  has  indeed  been  estimated  that  posi- 
tively, though  not  relatively,  there  are  more  great  rural 
estates  in  France  to-day  than  there  are  in  England.  The 
notion  that  the  Revolution  has  extinguished  great  proper- 
ties in  France,  is  as  utterly  mistaken  as  the  notion  that 
the  Revolution  created  the  system  of  small  properties. 
The  important  point  is  that  since  the  Revolution  every 
labourer  has  been  able  to  acquire  a  portion  of  the  soil ; 
and  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  adult  population  has 
already  so  done. 

It  is  also  likely  that  Young  overrated  the  depth  of  the 
external  discomfort  that  he  saw.  Under  such  a  brutal 
system  of  fiscal  and  manorial  oppression  as  was  then  rife, 
the  farmer  and  the  labourer  carefully  hide  what  wealth  they 
may  have,  and  deliberately  assume  the  outer  semblance  of 
want,  for  fear  of  the  tax-gatherer,  the  tithe  proctor,  and 
the  landlord's  bailiff.  That  has  been  seen  in  Ireland  for 
centuries  and  may  be  still  seen  to-day.  So  the  French 
peasant  was  not  always  so  poor  as  he  chose  to  appear  in 
Arthur  Young's  eyes. 

Another  thing  is  that  the  French  labouring  man,  and 
still  more  the  labouring  woman,  is  a  marvellously  penurious, 
patient,  frugal  creature  who  deliberately,  for  the  sake  of 
thrift,  endures  hard  fare,  uncleanness,  squalor,  such  as  no 
English  or  American  freeman  would  stomach  except  by 
necessity.  The  life  led  by  a  comfortable  English  or  Ameri- 


FRANCE    IN    1789    AND    1889. 

can  farmer  would  represent  wicked  waste  and  shameful 
indulgence  to  a  much  richer  French  peasant.  I  myself 
know  a  labourer  on  wages  of  less  than  twenty  shillings  a 
week,  who  by  thrift  has  bought  ten  acres  of  the  magnifi- 
cent garden  land  between  Fontainebleau  and  the  Seine, 
worth  many  thousand  pounds,  on  which  grow  all  kinds  of 
fruits  and  vegetables,  and  the  famous  dessert  grapes ;  yet 
who,  with  all  his  wealth  and  abundance,  denies  himself  and 
his  two  children  meat  on  Sundays,  and  even  a  drink  of  the 
wine  which  he  grows  and  makes  for  the  market.  I  know 
a  peasant  family  in  Normandy,  worth  in  houses,  gardens, 
and  farms,  at  least  500,000  francs,  who  will  live  on  the  orts 
cast  out  as  refuse  by  their  own  lodgers,  while  the  wife  and 
mother  hires  herself  out  as  a  scullion  for  two  francs  a  day. 
The  penuriousness  of  the  French  peasant  is  to  English 
eyes  a  thing  savage,  bestial,  and  maniacal. 

The  French  peasant  has  great  virtues  ;  but  he  has  the 
defects  of  his  virtues,  and  his  home  life  is  far  from  idyllic. 
He  is  laborious,  shrewd,  enduring,  frugal,  self-reliant,  sober, 
honest,  and  capable  of  intense  self-control  for  a  distant 
reward  ;  but  that  reward  is  property  in  land,  in  pursuit  of 
which  he  may  become  as  pitiless  as  a  bloodhound.  He  is 
not  chaste  (indeed  he  is  often  lecherous),  but  he  relent- 
lessly keeps  down  the  population,  and  can  hardly  bring 
himself  to  rear  two  children.  To  give  these  two  children 
a  good  heritage,  he  will  inflict  great  hardships  on  them  and 
on  all  others  whom  he  controls.  He  has  an  intense  passion 
for  his  own  immediate  locality ;  but  he  loves  his  own  com- 
mune, and  still  more  his  own  terre,  almost  as  much  as 
France.  He  is  not  indeed  the  monster  that  Zola  paints 
in  La  Terre  ;  but  there  is  a  certain  vein  of  Zolaism  in  him, 
and  the  type  may  be  found  in  the  criminal  records  of 
France.  He  is  intelligent ;  but  he  is  not  nearly  so  well 
educated  as  the  Swiss,  or  the  German,  or  the  Hollander. 


22O  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

He  is  able  to  bear  suffering  without  a  murmur  ;  but  he 
has  none  of  that  imperturbable  courage  that  Englishmen 
and  Americans  show  in  a  thousand  new  situations.  He  is 
shrewd  and  far-seeing,  and  a  tough  hand  in  a  bargain  ;  but 
he  has  none  of  the  inventive  audacity  of  the  American 
citizen.  He  is  self-reliant,  but  too  cautious  to  trust  him- 
self in  a  new  field.  He  is  independent,  but  without  the 
proud  dignity  of  the  Spanish  peasant.  He  has  a  love  for 
the  gay,  the  beautiful,  and  the  graceful,  which,  compared 
with  that  of  the  Englishman,  is  the  sense  of  art ;  though 
he  has  nothing  of  the  charm  of  the  Italian,  or  of  the 
musical  genius  of  the  German. 

Take  him  for  all  in  all,  he  is  a  strong  and  noteworthy 
force  in  modern  civilisation.  Though  his  country  has  not 
the  vast  mineral  wealth  of  England,  nor  her  gigantic  de- 
velopment in  manufactures  and  in  commerce,  he  has  made 
France  one  of  the  richest,  most  solid,  most  progressive 
countries  on  earth.  He  is  quite  as  frugal  and  patient 
as  the  German,  and  is  far  more  ingenious  and  skilful. 
He  has  not  the  energy  of  the  Englishman,  or  the 
elastic  spring  of  the  American,  but  he  is  far  more  saving 
and  much  more  provident.  He  'wastes  nothing,  and 
spends  little ' ;  and  thus,  since  his  country  comes  next  to 
England  and  America  in  natural  resources  and  national 
energy,  he  has  built  up  one  of  the  strongest,  most  self- 
contained,  and  most  durable  of  modern  peoples. 

Since  this  essay  appeared  in  1890,  Miss  Betham-Edwards 
has  published  her  own  most  valuable  and  interesting  sur- 
vey, her  France  of  To-day,  2  vols.,  1892-94.  This  book  is 
the  result  of  her  exhaustive  study  of  French  agriculture, 
over  twenty-five  years.  It  forms  the  pendant  to  Arthur 
Young,  and  as  being  a  study  exactly  one  hundred  years 
later,  over  the  same  ground  and  embodying  an  even  more 
extensive  knowledge  of  France  than  that  of  the  old  trav- 


FRANCE  IN  1789  AND  1889.  221 

eller,  it  becomes  a  work  of  rare  value  to  the  student  of 
history  and  of  politics.  Miss  Betham-Edwards  is  also  the 
well-known  author  of  several  other  books  of  travel  in 
France ;  and  her  readers  rejoice  to  learn  that  her  life-long 
labours  have  received  most  honourable  recognition  from 
the  Government  of  France  as  well  as  that  of  England. 

Fluctuat  nee  mergitur  should  be  the  motto  not  of  Paris 
but  of  France.  The  indomitable  endurance  of  her  race 
has  enabled  her  to  surmount  crushing  disasters,  .losses, 
and  disappointments  under  which  another  race  would  have 
sunk.  She  bears  with  ease  a  national  debt  the  annual 
charge  of  which  is  more  than  double  that  of  wealthy  Eng- 
land, and  a  taxation  nearly  double  that  of  England,  with 
almost  the  same  population  —  a  permanent  taxation  (ex- 
ceeding 100  francs  per  head)  greater  than  has  ever  before 
been  borne  by  any  people.  She  loses  over  one  war, 
a  sum  not  much  short  of  the  whole  national  debt  of 
England,  and  she  writes  off,  without  a  murmur,  a  loss  of 
1,200,000,000  francs,  thrown  into  the  Panama  Canal.  If 
France  is  thus  strong,  the  backbone  of  her  strength  is 
found  in  the  marvellous  industry  and  thrift  of  her  peas- 
antry. And  if  her  peasantry  are  industrious  and  thrifty, 
it  is  because  the  Revolution  of  '89  has  secured  to  them  a 
position  more  free  and  independent  than  that  presented 
by  any  monarchical  country  on  the  continent  of  Europe. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE    CITY  :    ANCIENT  —  MEDIEVAL MODERN  —  IDEAL. 

THE  life  that  men  live  in  the  City  gives  the  type  and 
measure  of  their  civilisation.  The  word  civilisation  means 
the  manner  of  life  of  the  civilised  part  of  the  community : 
i.e.  of  the  city-men,  not  of  the  country-men,  who  are  called 
rustics,  and  once  were  called  pagans,  or  the  heathens  of 
the  villages.  Hence,  inasmuch  as  a  city  is  a  highly  or- 
ganised and  concentrated  type  of  the  general  life  of  an 
epoch  or  people,  if  we  compare  the  various  types  of  the 
city,  we  are  able  to  measure  the  strength  and  weakness  of 
different  kinds  of  civilisation. 

How  enormous  is  the  range  over  which  city-life  extends, 
from  the  first  cave-men  and  dug-out  wigwams  in  pre- 
historic ages  to  the  complex  arrangements  and  appliances 
of  modern  Paris  (which  we  may  take  as  the  type  of  the 
highly  organised  modern  city  of  Europe).  How  vast  is 
the  interval  between  one  kind  of  town-life  and  another 
kind!  —  say  comparing  Bagdad  with  Chicago,  or  Naples 
with  Staleybridge.  The  differences  in  the  humblest  forms 
of  rural  life  are  far  less  apparent,  whether  we  deal  with  dif- 
ferent epochs  or  different  races.  The  ploughman  and  the  « 
shepherd  to-day  on  the  Cotswolds,  or  the  Cheviots,  cer- 
tainly the  tenants  of  mud-cabins  in  Connemara  or  Skye, 
do  not,  in  external  modes  of  material  life,  differ  so  greatly 
from  their  predecessors  in  the  days  of  the  Crusades  or 
even  of  the  Heptarchy ;  and  a  herdsman  of  Anatolia,  of 
La  Mancha,  or  of  Kerry,  eats,  sleeps,  and  works  in  very 


THE  CITY:  ANCIENT  —  MEDIAEVAL  —  MODERN  —  IDEAL.    223 

similar  ways.  But  how  vast  is  the  interval  between  the 
habits  and  conditions  of  the  Londoners  who  built  the 
Lake-village  of  Llyn-dyn,  or  the  Parisii  who  staked  out 
the  island  of  Loukhteith,  and  the  modern  Londoner  and 
the  modern  Parisian  ! 

The  change  began  with  the  landing  on  the  Thames,  or 
the  Seine,  of  a  few  thousand  men  in  armour  from  the 
Tiber,  led  by  the  greatest  genius  known  to  history,  who 
introduced  the  language,  law,  institutions,  and  discipline 
of  the  greatest  City  recorded  in  history.  In  old  times  some 
of  the  most  famous  cities  in  the  world  were  not  so  large 
as  one  London  parish,  and  not  nearly  so  populous.  En- 
tire states,  which  for  centuries  filled  the  page  of  the  main 
history  of  mankind,  did  not  cover  so  much  ground,  or  con- 
tain so  many  inhabitants,  as  do  London  and  Paris  to-day. 
The  men  of  Athens,  who  passed  their  lives  in  the  midst 
of  the  noblest  creations  of  art,  at  the  broken  fragments 
of  which  we  gaze  in  wonder  and  awe,  men  who  heard  the 
most  sublime  tragedies,  and  took  part  in  the  most  impos- 
ing ceremonies  ever  devised  by  man,  had  food,  garments, 
and  lodging  so  rough  and  plain  that  we  should  hardly 
think  it  fit  for  a  prison.  On  the  other  hand,  they  had  as 
much  leisure,  were  as  daintily  fastidious  in  their  tastes, 
and  regarded  themselves  as  much  lords  of  creation,  as  if 
they  were  all  officers  in  the  Guards. 

In  the  Middle  Ages,  the  men  who  passed  their  lives  in 
these  gorgeous  cathedrals,  of  which  we  only  see  the  col- 
ourless shell  to-day,  and  in  that  fantastic 'and  chivalrous 
art-life,  of  which  we  only  catch  glimpses  in  some  old  cor- 
ner of  Verona,  Nuremberg,  or  Florence,  lived  in  streets 
and  houses  so  fetid,  cramped,  poisonous,  and  gloomy, 
under  conditions  so  dangerous  to  life  and  limb,  so  full  of 
discomfort,  that  many  a  prisoner  would  prefer  his  warm 
cell  in  Pentonville.  And  we,  who  have  railways,  tele- 


224  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

phones,  and  newspapers,  who  make  everything  by  machin- 
ery, except  beauty  and  happiness  —  we  who  cannot  drink 
a  glass  of  water,  or  teach  children  to  read  and  write  with- 
out an  army  of  inspectors,  Acts  of  Parliament,  and  ama- 
teur Professors  of  Social  Science,  to  show  us  how  to  do 
it — we  who,  in  a  man's  lifetime,  cover  with  new  bricks  a 
whole  province,  in  area  bigger  than  the  Attica  of  Pericles, 
or  the  Roman  State  of  Coriolanus  :  —  we  lead,  in  some  of 
our  huge  manufacturing  cities,  lives  so  dull  and  mechani- 
cal that  Pericles  or  Coriolanus  would  have  preferred  exile. 
Out  of  a  vast  range  of  cities,  old  and  new,  it  would  be 
instructive  to  compare  four  types :  the  Ancient  city  of 
Greece  and  Italy  —  the  Mediaeval  city  of  Catholic  and 
Feudal  times  —  the  Modern  city  of  England,  France,  and 
America  —  and  then  the  Ideal  city,  as  we  can  conceive  it 
to  be,  in  the  future.  Each  age  has  its  strong  side,  and  its 
weak  side.  It  would  be  impossible  to  bring  back  any 
obsolete  type  of  society :  but  things  may  be  learned  from 
some  of  them.  And,  where  we  have  horrible  evils  of  our 
own  to  conquer,  it  may  be  just  as  well  to  reflect  on  a  very 
different  type  of  life,  under  other  conceptions  of  nature 
and  of  man. 

I.   The  Ancient  City. 

Let  us  imagine  ourselves  citizens  of  some  famous  city 
of  Greece  or  Italy  in  the  earlier  ages  before  the  Roman 
empire  —  such"  a  city  as  Athens,  Corinth,  Syracuse,  or 
Rome  some  centuries  before  Christ.  Our  city  would  be 
at  once  our  Country,  our  Church,  our  Religion  —  our 
school,  academy,  and  university, —  our  museum,  our  trade- 
gild,  our  play-ground,  and  our  club.  The  city  would  have 
been  founded  by  some  god  or  demi-god,  with  mysterious 
and  half-uttered  legends  about  its  origin  ;  and  the  knowl- 


THE    ANCIENT    CITY.  225 

edge  of  these  was  thought  to  be  confined  to  a  select  few, 
who  were  quite  unable  or  unwilling  to  divulge  it,  legends 
preserved  by  quaint  rites  and  traditional  ceremonials  that 
all  reverenced  and  none  could  explain.  The  city  would 
be,  not  only  the  special  creation  but  the  favourite  home  of 
some  great  god ;  it  would  be  also  the  chosen  abode  of  a 
company  of  minor  gods  and  heroes  whose  images,  altars, 
sanctuaries,  groves,  fountains,  caves,  or  rocks,  would  lie 
thickly  around  and  be  chiefly  grouped  about  the  citadel. 
There  would  be  the  olive  that  sprang  from  the  ground  at 
the  stroke  of  Athene's  spear,  the  water  of  some  nymph, 
the  oracular  cave  of  some  prophet,  the  eternal  fire,  the 
stone  that  fell  from  heaven,  the  lair  of  the  sacred  serpent, 
the  rude  bronze  or  oaken  fetish,  and  all  the  mysteries  of 
the  Holy  of  Holies  in  the  upper  or  inner  city. 

The  citizen  was  born  to  the  privilege  of  these  gods  :  his 
city  and  its  worship  and  rites  formed  an  inalienable  relig- 
ion which  no  man  could  acquire,  no  man  could  put  off. 
A  man  could  not  change  his  city,  except  under  rare  and 
difficult  conditions  ;  if  he  left  this  city  he  became  an  out- 
cast and  an  outlaw,  a  man  without  legal  rights  or  religious 
privileges,  unless  so  far  as  he  was  protected  or  adopted  by 
some  new  household  or  gild.  To  be  banished  from  one's 
city  was  a  sort  of  civil  death  ;  moral  and  spiritual  degra- 
dation, with  some  of  the  effects  of  excommunication  and 
outlawry  at  once.  If  a  man  came  to  a  city  not  his  own 
for  pleasure  or  business,  he  remained  a  sojourner  and  a 
foreigner,  without  the  rights  of  citizenship,  in  a  state  be- 
tween a  citizen  and  a  slave ;  and  his  condition  was  less 
pleasant  and  secure  than  is  that  of  a  Chinese  coolie  in 
California  or  Victoria. 

To  the  free-born  citizen,  his  City  was  his  Church  and  his 
Country,  his  home  and  his  society.  The  worship  of  the 
gods  consisted  in  a  constant  succession  of  public  cere- 
p 


226  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

monies  which  combined  artistic  display  with  civic  festival. 
To  all  of  these  the  citizen  was  free,  and  no  business  or 
work  was  allowed  to  interfere  with  the  social  and  religious 
duty  of  attending  what  was  at  once  divine  service  and 
patriotic  function.  The  southern  climate  usually  enabled 
him  to  enjoy  all  these  in  the  open  air  or  under  a  covered 
portico  —  pictures,  statues,  processions,  lectures,  hymns, 
sacrifices,  musical  celebrations,  were  all  to  be  found  in 
public  places  or  open  colonnades.  The  piety  and  public 
spirit  of  the  opulent  noble  filled  each  market-place  or 
street  corner  with  a  work  of  art,  a  shrine,  a  statue,  a  foun- 
tain or  a  portico.  There  were  no  museums,  because  the 
city,  its  temples,  and  forum  were  a  continuous  museum, 
open  at  all  times  and  without  fee  or  ticket.  The  theatres 
were  in  buildings  hollowed  out  of  the  rock  or  open  to  the 
sky,  and  were  practically  free  of  charge.  Exhibitions  of 
skill,  dancing,  the  singing  in  chorus  of  hymns,  processions 
on  horse  and  foot,  chariot  races  and  horse  races,  even  com- 
bats with  beasts 'and  pantomimes  were,  in  origin  and  in 
theory,  religious  ceremonies,  and  as  such  were  open  and 
gratuitous  in  practice. 

It  was  a  civic  obligation  of  the  rich  and  well-born  to 
offer  these  artistic  displays  and  these  means  of  religious 
worship  to  their  fellow-citizens  ;  and  it  was  part  of  the 
inheritance  they  derived  from  their  ancestors  and  their 
ancestral  deities.  These  leitourgies  were  the  tribute  that 
the  rich  paid  to  the  state  and  to  the  patron  gods  of  their 
family  and  the  shades  of  their  forefathers.  That  which 
began  as  a  sacred  duty  to  family  and  to  the  Powers  above 
and  below  gradually  became  a  sort  of  public  tax  or  civic 
obligation  to  their  countrymen.  They  were  expected  to 
provide  plays,  festivals,  illuminations,  races,  concerts,  foun- 
tains, baths,  temples,  and  works  of  art.  At  Rome  they 
pleaded  the  causes  of  their  clients  in  the  law-courts,  pro- 


THE    ANCIENT    CITY.  22/ 

tected  them  in  difficulty,  and  ultimately  supported  them 
in  need,  they  threw  open  their  gardens,  and  often  they 
bequeathed  their  mansions,  gardens,  estates,  and  wealth 
to  the  city  as  their  heirs.  The  wealthy  and  the  ambi- 
tious were  expected  to  take  the  lead  in  peace  and  in  war, 
in  matters  sacred  or  profane,  in  art  and  in  law.  On  the 
great  festivals  and  civic  gatherings  they  were  called  on 
to  make  what  are  called  in  the  States  public  '  orations '  in 
honour  of  the  city,  its  sons,  and  its  deities.  Public  men 
in  Europe,  like  '  prominent  citizens '  in  America,  are  also 
accustomed  to  make  '  orations  '  ;  and  Lord  Rosebery  or 
Mr.  Balfour  can  hardly  play  a  game  or  eat  a  dinner  with- 
out being  called  on  for  a  few  words.  But  at  Athens  or  at 
Rome,  it  was  a  more  serious  and  perhaps  a  more  artistic 
performance  than  our  after-dinner  witticisms.  And  those 
who  stood  in  the  forum  and  listened  to  Pericles  and  to 
Demosthenes,  to  Scipio  and  to  Cicero,  took  home  more 
material  for  thought  and  a  higher  standard  of  public 
debate  than  what  we  usually  carry  away  with  us  from 
a  crowded  town's-meeting. 

Men  did  not  make  speeches  in  public  meetings  in  order 
'  to  get  into  Parliament ' :  because  every  adult  citizen  was 
himself  a  member  of  Parliament,  or  at  least  a  legislator. 
At  set  times,  the  citizens  were  gathered  in  the  agora  or 
forum  round  the  bema  or  rostrum,  listened  to  those  who 
addressed  them,  and  then  and  there  voted  decrees  and 
made  laws.  In  many  Greek  cities  any  citizen  had  a  right 
to  stand  up  and  propose  a  decree  or  a  law  or  amendment ; 
and  if  he  could  persuade  his  fellow-citizens,  or  such  of 
them  as  chose  to  attend  the  meeting,  his  proposition  was 
at  once  carried  out.  A  citizen's  trade  or  profession,  if  he 
had  one,  was  practically  determined  by  custom  ;  and,  as  a 
rule,  it  could  not  be  exercised  freely  in  any  other  way  or 
in  other  place.  The  public  places,  gardens,  temples,  colon- 


228  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

nades,  and  monuments  were  perpetually  thronged  with  citi- 
zens who  knew  each  other  by  sight  and  name,  who  spent 
their  lives  in  a  sort  of  open-air  club,  talking  politics,  art, 
business,  or  scandal  —  criticised  Aristophanes'  last  comic 
opera  and  Cicero's  furious  attack  on  Clodius.  And  in  the 
cool  of  the  day  they  gathered  to  see  the  young  lads 
wrestle,  race,  leap,  and  box,  cast  the  javelin  or  the  stone ; 
and  the  younger  warriors  practised  feats  with  their  horses 
or  with  the  spear  and  the  shield. 

Of  course  such  a  city  was  of  moderate  size.  No  city  in 
Greece  proper  exceeded  in  size  such  cities  as  Edinburgh 
or  York ;  and  most  of  them  were  of  smaller  area  than 
Lincoln  and  Oxford.  Even  Rome,  Syracuse,  and  Alexan- 
dria, the  largest  cities  of  the  ancient  world,  were  not  so 
vast  but  what  one  could  walk  round  their  outer  walls  in  a 
summer  afternoon.  In  Greece  and  Italy,  every  consider- 
able city  was  beautiful  and  set  in  a  beautiful  site  —  with 
a  central  citadel  crowned  with  porticoes,  colonnades,  and 
temples ;  and  in  some  cities,  such  as  Athens,  Corinth, 
Ephesus,  Byzantium,  Sparta,  Corcyra,  Naples,  Ancona, 
Rome,  with  a  panorama  of  varied  splendour.  Within  the 
walls  there  would  be  ample  space  for  gardens,  groves,  parks, 
and  exercise  grounds  ;  and  on  issuing  from  the  walls  with- 
out, the  open  country  at  once  presented  itself,  where  game 
could  be  chased  or  the  mountain-side  could  be  roamed. 
There  were  no  leagues  of  dull  and  grimy  suburbs,  no  acres 
of  factories  and  smoky  furnaces,  fetid  streams,  and  squalid 
wastes ;  there  was  no  drunkenness  in  the  streets,  and 
practically  no  rates  and  taxes  and  no  poor-houses. 

Health  was  a  matter  of  religion,  and  it  was  vastly  pro- 
moted by  this,  that  cleanliness  and  sanitary  discipline  was 
a  religious  duty  as  well  as  an  affair  of  personal  pride.  It 
remained  a  religious  duty  and  a  poetic  sentiment  after 
definite  belief  in  local  gods  had  become  a  mere  convention 


THE    ANCIENT    CITY.  22Q 

or  a  phrase.  To  defile  the  precincts  of  the  city,  and  almost 
every  open  corner  of  it  was  consecrated  to  some  deity  or 
hero,  was  to  outrage  the  powers  of  heaven  or  of  earth  ;  to 
cast  refuse  or  sewage  into  a  stream  was  to  incur  the  wrath 
of  some  river-god  ;  to  pollute  one  of  the  city  fountains  was 
to  offer  sacrilege  to  some  water-nymph.  To  bring  disease 
into  some  public  gathering  was  to  insult  the  gods  and 
demi-gods ;  to  place  the  dead  within  the  precincts  of  a 
temple,  or  to  bury  the  dead  within  the  city,  or  in  contact 
with  human  habitations,  to  leave  the  dead  or  any  human 
remains  unburied  or  scattered  about  in  public  places  and 
abandoned  as  carrion,  would  have  seemed  to  a  Greek  or  a 
Roman  the  last  enormity  of  blasphemous  horror. 

To  wash,  to  shampoo  the  skin  daily,  to  trim  and  anoint 
the  hair,  to  scour  the  clothes  (and  the  Roman  toga  was 
made  of  white  wool  which  needed  endless  scouring),  to 
brush,  paint,  and  lime  wash  the  walls  and  floors,  to  cleanse 
the  public  thoroughfares,  to  get  rid  of  every  form  of  un- 
cleanness  and  refuse  —  this  was  a  religious,  social,  domestic, 
and  personal  duty :  to  effect  which  were  concentrated 
almost  all  the  impulses  that  we  know  as  obedience  to  the 
Deity,  social  decency,  family  pride,  and  the  being  a  gentle- 
man and  a  lady.  A  Greek  who  should  have  submitted  to 
live  in  the  bestial  uncleanness,  the  fetid  atmosphere,  and 
the  polluted  water  supply  to  which  we  condemn  such 
masses  of  the  labouring  people  of  our  vast  cities,  would 
have  felt  himself  a  rebel  against  the  gods  above,  and  an 
outcast  from  the  fellowship  of  decent  citizens.  The  Greek 
word  for  'gentleman'  is  Ka\oKaya66<s,  which  literally  means 
the  '  beautiful  and  the  good,'  and  which,  perhaps,  came  to 
mean  in  practice  the  clean  and  'the  nice,'  as  we  say,  gens 
comme  ilfaut,  as  the  French  say,  '  the  well-washed  '  and  '  the 
respectable.'  No  Greek  could  think  himself  'respectable' 
or  '  nice,'  unless  he  were  constantly  scouring,  scraping, 


23O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

washing,  polishing,  and  anointing  his  person,  his  clothes, 
his  house,  and  his  utensils.  And  the  women  were  almost 
as  active  as  the  men  in  the  daily  use  of  the  bath. 

The  habit  of  constant  discussion  and  witnessing  shows 
grew  on  the  Greeks,  as  the  habit  of  bathing  grew  on  the 
Romans,  until  these  things  became  a  mania  to  which  their 
lives  were  given  up.  Whole  rivers  were  brought  down 
from  the  mountains  in  aqueducts,  and  ultimately  in  the 
Roman  empire  the  city  population  spent  a  large  part  of 
their  day  in  the  public  baths  —  buildings  as  big  as  St. 
Paul's  Cathedral  and  of  magnificent  materials  and  adorn- 
ment—  where  5000  persons  could  meet  and  take  their  air- 
bath  in  what  was  club,  play-ground,  theatre,  lecture-hall, 
and  promenade  at  once.  Such  was  the  classical  religion 
of  cleanliness,  of  which  the  Musulman  has  inherited  some 
traditions,  and  of  which  Europe  in  our  own  generation  is 
beginning  to  revive  the  practice.  The  excess  of  this  skin 
deep  purification  of  the  body  led  to  a  melancholy  reaction, 
when  Christianity  denounced  it  as  sinful,  and  reconsecrated 
Dirt,  the  natural  state  of  primitive  man ;  until  at  last  in 
the  ages  of  faith  we  had  uncleanness  of  the  body  regarded 
as  the  purity  of  the  soul,  and  a  man  was  exalted  to  be 
saint  when  he  was  found  to  have  made  himself  a  mass  of 
vermin. 

The  obverse  to  the  bright  picture  of  the  Ancient  City 
was  dark  enough.  If  the  citizens  engaged  in  war,  and  war 
was  always,  until  the  consolidation  of  empire  by  Rome, 
a  possible  event,  defeat  meant  the  risk  of  having  the  city 
razed  to  the  ground,  or  turned  into  an  open  village ;  some- 
times a  general  massacre,  or  slavery  for  man  and  woman. 
Or,  if  in  domestic  politics,  a  crisis  occurred,  which  with 
us  means  a  change  of  government,  in  Greece  or  Italy  it 
might  imply  to  the  losers  at  the  ballot  confiscation  and 
exile ;  and  the  defeated  party,  be  they  democrat  or  aristo- 


THE    ANCIENT    CITY.  23! 

crat,  lost  home  and  country,  and  became  outcasts  and  out- 
laws until  they  could  get  a  reversal  of  the  sentence. 
Furthermore,  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  full  privileges 
of  citizen  belonged  only  to  a  portion  of  the  inhabitants  of 
the  city  —  a  portion  which  might  not  exceed  one-tenth, 
whilst  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  actual  dwellers  within  the 
walls  might  be  slaves,  freedmen,  aliens,  strangers,  clients, 
and  camp-followers.  And  the  slaves  in  the  public  service, 
in  the  mines  and  factories,  or  in  the  farms,  docks,  ships, 
or  warehouses  led  a  life  too  often  of  appalling  misery  and 
toil.  Even  the  household  slaves  who  shared  the  intimacy 
of  their  master  or  mistress,  who  were  often  their  superiors 
in  culture  and  refinement,  were  liable  to  horrible  punish- 
ments, to  bodily  and  moral  degradation,  and  to  any  cruelty 
or  insult  which  brutality  and  caprice  might  inflict.  During 
the  brilliant  age  at  Greece,  and  at  last  under  the  empire 
at  Rome,  domestic  life  in  our  modern  sense  was  stunted 
or  corrupt.  At  Greece,  the  wife  was  too  often  the  drudge 
or  the  appendage  of  the  household ;  at  Rome,  she  too  often 
became  the  tyrant.  Female  society  in  its  higher  meaning 
was  unknown,  unless  in  a  depraved  sense.  Vice,  indolence, 
indecency,  were  not  only  things  not  involving  shame,  but 
things  which  in  an  elegant  form  were  a  matter  of  public 
pride. 

Thus  this  apotheosis  of  the  City  had  both  black  and 
brilliant  sides.  But  there  is  no  essential  connexion  be- 
tween its  bright  and  its  dark  aspect.  This  religious 
veneration  of  the  City,  this  worship  of  the  City  as  the 
practical  type  of  religion,  was  extravagant,  anti-social,  and 
inhuman  in  the  wider  sense  of  patriotism  and  human  duty. 
But  it  had  elements  of  fixity,  of  dignity,  of  reality,  and  of 
moral  and  religious  fervour,  that  are  wholly  unknown  to 
our  city  life,  inconceivable  even  by  us,  elements  to  which 
our  tepid  Patriotism  makes  but  a  feeble  approach.  The 


232  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

citizens  were  not  indeed  the  members  of  a  great  nation, 
but  a  very  close,  jealous,  and  selfish  civic  aristocracy. 
Within  their  own  order  they  gave  the  world  fine  examples 
of  equality,  simplicity,  sociability,  and  public  devotion, 
such  as  are  hardly  intelligible  to  modern  men,  such  as  no 
republican  enthusiasm  has  ever  in  modern  days  attempted 
to  revive.  In  the  horror  of  dirt  and  the  religion  of  per- 
sonal health  and  perfection,  they  gave  the  world  inimitable 
examples  at  which  we  look  back  in  wonder  and  awe.  For 
the  love  of  beauty  we  have  taken  to  us  the  love  of  com- 
fort ;  for  the  profusion  of  art  we  have  substituted  material 
production  ;  for  the  religio  loci  we  prefer  the  vague  immen- 
sities of  the  Universe  ;  in  place  of  public  magnificence 
and  social  communion,  we  make  idols  of  our  domestic 
privacy  and  private  luxuriousness.  .  ' 


II.   The  Mediceval  City. 

We  turn  to  imagine  some  city  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
Here  also  would  be  as  in  an  ancient  city,  a  long  circuit  of 
walls,  with  gates  and  towers,  a  military  and  highly  organ- 
ised society,  a  complex  religious  system,  intense  civic 
pride  and  patriotism.  And  yet  the  differences  are  vast. 
The  grand  difference  of  all  is  that  the  city  is  no  longer 
the  State,  except  in  some  parts  of  Italy,  and  even  there 
not  in  the  early  Middle  Ages.  In  the  early  Middle  Ages, 
the  city  is  not  the  State  or  the  nation  :  it  is  only  a  strong- 
hold, or  fortified  magazine  in  the  barony,  duchy,  kingdom, 
or  empire.  It  is  only  a  big  and  very  complicated  castle, 
with  its  defensive  system  exactly  like  any  other  castle, 
governed  by  a  mayor,  bailiff,  or  prior,  and  the  burgher 
council,  and  not  necessarily  by  a  feudal  lord.  Except  in 
Italy  and  a  few  free  towns  along  the  Mediterranean  at 


THE    MEDIAEVAL    CITY.  233 

particular  periods,  no  city  counted  itself  as  wholly  outside 
the  jurisdiction  of  some  overlord,  king,  or  emperor. 

Apart  from  its  political  and  legal  privileges,  a  mediaeval 
city  was  something  like  Windsor  Castle  or  the  Tower  of 
London,  on  a  large  scale  and  with  many  subdivisions, 
governed  by  an  elected  corporation  and  not  by  a  baron  or 
viceroy.  The  ancient  city,  however  much  it  had  to  fear 
war  and  opposition  from  its  rival  cities  or  states,  could  feel 
safe  within  its  own  territories  from  any  attack  on  the  part 
of  its  rural  neighbours,  subjects,  or  fellow-citizens.  There 
it  was  mistress,  or  rather  the  city  included  the  territory 
around  it.  No  Athenian  ever  dreamed  of  being  invaded 
by  the  inhabitants  of  Attica,  or  even  of  Bceotia.  No 
Roman  troubled  himself  about  Latians  or  Etruscans  other 
than  the  citizens  of  Latian  or  Tuscan  cities.  City  life  in 
the  Middle  Ages  was  a  very  different  thing.  Until  a 
mediaeval  city  became  very  strong  and  had  secured  round 
itself  an  ample  territory,  it  was  always  in  difficulties  with 
the  lords  of  neighbouring  fiefs  and  castles.  Even  in  Italy, 
before  the  great  cities  had  crushed  the  feudal-lords  and 
had  forced  them  to  become  citizens,  the  mediaeval  cities 
had  constantly  to  fight  for  their  existence  against  chiefs 
whose  castles  lay  within  sight.  The  ancient  city  was  a 
State  —  the  collective  centre  of  an  organised  territory, 
supreme  within  it,  and  owing  no  fealty  to  any  other  sover- 
eign, temporal  or  spiritual,  outside  its  own  territory.  The 
mediaeval  city  was  only  a  privileged  town  within  a  fief  or 
kingdom,  having  charters,  rights,  and  fortifications  of  its 
own  ;  but,  both  in  religious  and  in  political  rank,  bound 
in  absolute  duty  to  far  distant  and  much  more  exalted 
superiors. 

Partly  as  a  consequence  of  its  being  in  constant  danger 
from  its  neighbours,  it  had  a  defensive  system  vastly  more 
elaborate  than  that  of  ancient  cities.  Its  outer  walls  were 


234  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

of  enormous  height,  thickness,  and  complexity.  They 
were  flanked  with  gigantic  towers,  gates,  posterns,  and 
watch-towers  ;  it  had  a  broad  moat  round  'it  and  a  com- 
plicated series  of  drawbridges,  stockades,  barbicans,  and 
outworks.  We  may  see  something  of  it  in  the  old  city 
of  Carcassonne  in  the  south  of  France,  destroyed  by 
St.  Louis  in  1262,  in  the  walls  of  Rome  round  the  Vatican, 
and  in  the  old  walls  of  Constantinople  on  the  western  side 
near  the  Gate  of  St.  Romanus.  From  without  the  Medi- 
aeval City  looked  like  a  vast  castle.  And  the  military 
discipline  and  precautions  were  entirely  those  of  a  castle. 
In  peace  or  war,  it  was  a  fortress  first,  and  a  dwelling- 
place  afterwards.  This  vast  apparatus  of  defence  cramped 
the  space  and  shut  out  light,  air,  and  prospect.  Few 
ancient  cities  would  have  looked  from  without  like  a 
fortress ;  for  the  walls  were  much  lower  and  simpler,  in 
the  absence  of  any  elaborate  system  of  artillery.  But  the 
Mediaeval  City  with  its  far  loftier  walls,  towers,  gates,  and 
successive  defences  looked  more  like  a  prison  than  a  town, 
and  indeed  to  a  great  extent  it  was  a  prison.  There  could 
seldom  have  been  much  prospect  from  within  it,  except  of 
its  own  walls  and  towers  ;  there  were  few  open  spaces, 
usually  there  was  one  small  market-place,  no  public  gar- 
dens or  walks  ;  the  city  was  encumbered  with  castles, 
monasteries,  and  castellated  enclosures  ;  and  the  bridges 
and  quays  were  crowded  with  a  confused  pile  of  lofty 
wooden  houses ;  and,  as  the  walls  necessarily  ran  along 
any  sea  or  river  frontage  that  the  city  had,  it  was  impos- 
sible to  get  any  general  view  of  the  town,  or  to  look  up  or 
down  the  river  for  the  closely-packed  buildings  on  the 
bridges. 

As  a  rule  there  was  no  citadel  as  in  the  ancient  cities, 
Ihough  there  was  sometimes  an  upper  and  a  lower  town, 
and  often  a  castle  in  one  corner  or  side  of  the  city,  as 


THE    MEDLEVAL    CITY.  235 

the  Tower  is  at  London  and  the  Bastille  was  at  Paris, 
St.  Angelo  at  Rome,  or  Blachernae  and  the  Seven  Towers 
at  Constantinople.  The  place  of  citadel  was  usually  occu- 
pied by  some  vast  central  cathedral  or  abbey ;  which,  with 
its  adjuncts,  occupied  nearly  one-tenth  of  the  whole  area 
in  such  cities  as  Lincoln,  York,  Amiens,  Reims,  Orvieto ; 
and  even  in  cities  like  Florence,  Paris,  Rouen,  London, 
Antwerp,  and  Cologne,  stood  out  in  the  far  distance  tower- 
ing over  the  city  as  did  the  Acropolis  at  Attiens  or  the 
Capitol  at  Rome.  Within  the  walls,  and  around  the  walls 
for  a  distance  of  many  miles,  was  a  profusion  of  churches, 
abbeys,  nunneries,  chapels,  oratories,  varying  from  such 
enormous  piles  as  those  of  Westminster,  of  St.  Germain 
des  Prh,  St.  Peter's  and  the  Vatican  at  Rome,  to  the 
smallest  chantry  on  the  pier  of  a  bridge  where  a  benison 
could  be  said. 

Many  of  these  churches  were  far  larger  than  the  ancient 
temples  ;  and  if  their  architecture  had  not  the  stately  and 
simple  dignity  of  the  Doric  fane,  they  were  far  richer  in 
varied  works  of  art,  more  gorgeous  in  colour,  and  infinitely 
more  charged  with  religious  and  aesthetic  impression. 
Painting,  fresco,  mosaic,  stained  glass,  gilding,  carved 
statues,  coloured  marbles,  images  and  reliefs  in  thousands, 
chased  gold  and  silver  utensils,  bronzes,  ivories,  silks,  vel- 
vets, tapestries,  embroideries,  illuminated  books,  carved 
wood,  bells,  clocks,  perfumes,  organs,  instruments,  choirs 
of  singers  —  every  beautiful  and  delightful  thing  was 
crowded  together,  with  the  relics  of  saints,  the  tombs  of 
great  men,  the  graves  of  citizens  for  centuries,  wonder- 
working pictures,  miraculous  images,  lamps  and  candles 
on  a  thousand  altars,  chapels,  offerings  and  images  dedi- 
cated to  countless  saints,  martyrs,  and  holy  men.  A 
mediaeval  Church,  however  much  it  lacked  the  austere 
simplicity  and  faultless  symmetry  of  a  Greek  temple,  was 


236  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

as  much  deeper  and  more  full  in  its  solemnity  and  power, 
as  the  Catholic  mythology  was  deeper  and  nobler  than  the 
classical  mythology. 

So  too  the  Church  was  morally  a  far  nobler  thing  than 
the  Temple.  It  was  no  mere  colonnade  for  processions, 
lounging,  and  society.  It  was  this,  but  much  more  also. 
It  was  school,  art-museum,  music-hall,  place  of  personal 
prayer/  of  confession  of  sin,  preaching,  teaching,  and  civil- 
ising. It  combined  what  at  Athens  was  to  be  sought  in 
Parthenon,  Theseum,  Theatre,  Academus,  Stoa,  and  Agora 
—  and  very  much  beside  which  was  never  known  at  Athens 
at  all  —  sacrament,  confession,  penance,  sermon.  A  Medi- 
aeval city  was  full  of  such  centres  of  moral  and  spiritual 
education ;  and  in  and  around  such  cities  as  Rome,  Paris, 
and  London,  the  religious  edifices  of  all  kinds  were  counted 
not  by  hundreds,  but  by  thousands.  Every  great  mediaeval 
city  contained  its  monasteries,  nunneries,  hospices,  and 
colleges,  vast  ranges  of  foundations  that  were  at  once 
schools,  training  colleges,  hospitals,  refuges,  and  poor- 
houses.  Here  was  the  grand  difference  between  the  an- 
cient and  the  mediaeval  city.  Within  the  city,  there  were 
now  no  slaves,  no  serfs,  no  abject  and  outlaw  caste  of  any 
kind,  except  the  Jews  who  formed  a  separate  city  of  their 
own.  All  citizens  were  free :  all  without  exception  had 
rights  of  some  kind.  The  churches,  monasteries,  hospi- 
tals, and  schools  existed,  in  original  design,  mainly  for  the 
poor,  the  wretched,  and  the  diseased.  Christ  loved  the 
weak  and  the  suffering.  And  the  doors  of  His  house  stood 
ever  open  to  the  .weak,  the  suffering,  the  halt,  the  blind, 
and  the  lame.  The  church  of  the  Middle  Ages  suffered 
little  children  to  come  unto  Him.  The  poorest,  the  weak- 
est, the  most  abject,  were  welcome  there.  The  Priest,  the 
Monk,  the  Nun  taught,  clothed,  and  nursed  the  children 
of  the  poor,  and  the  suffering  poor.  The  leper  was  tended 


THE    MEDLEVAL    CITY.  237 

in  lazar-houses,  even  it  might  be  by  kings  and  princesses, 
with  the  devotion  of  Christian  self-sacrifice.  For  the  first 
time  in  history  there  were  schools,  hospitals,  poor-houses, 
for  the  most  lowly,  compassion  for  the  most  miserable, 
and  consolation  in  Heaven  for  those  who  had  found  earth 
a  Hell. 

The  old  Greek  and  Roman  religion  of  external  cleanness 
was  turned  into  a  sin.  The  outward  and  visible  sign  of 
sanctity  now  was  to  be  unclean.  No  one  was  clean:  but' 
the  devout  Christian  was  unutterably  foul.  The  tone  of 
the  Middle  Ages  in  the  matter  of  dirt  was  a  form  of  mental 
disease.  Cooped  up  in  castles  and  walled  cities,  with  nar- 
row courts  and  sunless  alleys,  they  would  pass  day  and 
night  in  the  same  clothes,  within  the  same  airless,  gloomy, 
windowless,  and  pestiferous  chambers ;  they  would  go  to 
bed  without  night  clothes,  and  sleep  under  uncleansed 
sheepskins  and  frieze  rugs ;  they  would  wear  the  same 
leather,  fur,  and  woollen  garments  for  a  lifetime,  and  even 
for  successive  generations  ;  they  ate  their  meals  without 
forks,  and  covered  up  the  orts  with  rushes ;  they  flung 
their  refuse  out  of  the  window  into  the  street  or  piled  it 
up  in  the  back-yard  ;  the  streets  were  narrow,  unpaved, 
crooked  lanes  through  which,  under  the  very  palace  tur- 
rets, men  and  beasts  tramped  knee-deep  in  noisome  mire. 
This  was  at  intervals  varied  with  fetid  rivulets  and  open 
cesspools  ;  every  church  was  crammed  with  rotting  corpses 
and  surrounded  with  graveyards,  sodden  with  cadaveric 
liquids,  and  strewn  with  disinterred  bones.  Round  these 
charnel  houses  and  pestiferous  churches  were  piled  old 
decaying  wooden  houses,  their  sole  air  being  these  deadly 
exhalations,  and  their  sole  water  supply  being  these  pol- 
luted streams  or  wells  dug  in  this  reeking  soil.  Even  in 
the  palaces  and  castles  of  the  rich  the  same  bestial  habits 
prevailed.  Prisoners  rotted  in  noisome  dungeons  under 


238  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

the  banqueting  hall ;  corpses  were  buried  under  the  floor 
of  the  private  chapel ;  scores  of  soldiers  and  attendants 
slept  in  gangs  for  months  together  in  the  same  hall  or 
guard-room  where  they  ate  and  drank,  played  and  fought. 
It  is  one  of  those  problems  which  still  remain  for  .histo- 
rians to  solve  —  how  the  race  ever  survived  the  insanitary 
conditions  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  still  more  how  it  was 
ever  continued  —  what  was  the  normal  death-rate  and  the 
normal  birth-rate  of  cities  ?  The  towns  were  no  doubt 
maintained  by  immigration,  and  the  rural  labourer  had  the 
best  chance  of  life,  if  he  could  manage  to  escape  death  by 
violence  or  famine. 

With  all  this,  there  was  about  the  great  cities  of  the 
Middle  Ages  a  noble  spirit  of  civic  life  and  energy,  an 
ever-present  love  of  Art,  a  zeal  for  good  work  as  good 
work,  and  a  deep  under-lying  sense  of  social  duty  and 
personal  faithfulness.  A  real  and  sacred  bond  held  the 
master  and  his  apprentices  together,  the  master  workman 
to  his  men,  the  craftsman  to  his  gild-brethren,  the  gild- 
men  in  the  mass  as  a  great  aggregate  corporation.  Each 
burgher's  house  was  his  factory  and  workshop,  each  house, 
each  parish,  each  gild,  each  town  had  its  own  patron  saint, 
its  own  special  church,  its  own  feudal  patron,  its  corporate 
life,  its  own  privileges,  traditions,  and  emblems.  Thus 
grew  up  for  the  whole  range  of  the  artificer's  life,  for  the 
civic  life,  for  the  commercial  life,  a  profound  sense  of  con- 
secrated rule  which  amounted  to  a  kind  of  religion  of  In- 
dustry, a  sort  of  patriotism  of  Industry,  an  Art  of  Industry, 
the  like  of  which  has  never  existed  before  or  since.  It 
was  in  ideal  and  in  aim  (though  alas !  not  often  in  fact) 
the  highest  form  of  secular  life  that  human  society  has  yet 
reached.  It  rested  ultimately,  though  somewhat  vaguely, 
on  religious  Duty.  And  it  produced  a  sense  of  mutual 
obligation  between  master  and  man,  employer  and  em- 


THE    MODERN    CITY.  239 

ployed,  old  and  young,  rich  and  poor,  wise  and  ignorant. 
To  restore  the  place  of  this  sense  of  social  obligation  in 
Industry,  the  world  has  been  seeking  and  experimenting 
now  for  these  four  centuries  past. 

III.    The  Modern  City. 

It  is  needless  to  describe  the  modern  city :  we  all  know 
what  it  is,  some  of  us  too  well.  The  first  great  fact  about 
the  Modern  City  is  that  it  is  in  a  far  lower  stage  of  organic 
life.  It  is  almost  entirely  bereft  of  any  religious,  patri- 
otic, or  artistic  character  as  a  whole.  There  is  in  modern 
cities  a  great  deal  of  active  religious  life,  much  public 
spirit,  in  certain  parts  a  love  of  beauty,  taste,  and  cultiva- 
tion of  a  special  kind.  But  it  is  not  embodied  in  the  city ; 
it  is  not  associated  with  the  city ;  it  does  not  radiate  from 
the  city.  The  Modern  City  is  ever  changing,  loose  in  its 
organisation,  casual  in  its  form.  It  grows  up,  or  extends 
suddenly,  no  man  knows  how,  in  a  single  generation  —  in 
America  in  a  single  decade.  Its  denizens  come  and  go, 
pass  on,  changing  every  few  years  and  even  months.  Few 
families  have  lived  in  the  same  city  for  three  successive 
generations.  An  Athenian,  Syracusan,  Roman  family  had 
dwelt  in  their  city  for  twenty  generations. 

A  typical  industrial  city  of  modern  times  has  no  founder, 
no  traditional  heroes,  no  patrons  or  saints,  no  emblem,  no 
history,  no  definite  circuit.  In  a  century,  it  changes  its 
population  over  and  over  again,  and  takes  on  two  or  three 
different  forms.  In  ten  or  twenty  years  it  evolves  a  vast 
new  suburb,  a  mere  wen  of  bricks  or  stone,  with  no  god  or 
demi-god  for  its  founder,  but  a  speculative  builder,  a  syndi- 
cate or  a  railway.  The  speculative  builder  or  the  company 
want  a  quick  return  for  their  money.  The  new  suburb  is 
occupied  by  people  who  are  so  busy,  and  in  such  a  hurry 


24O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

to  get  to  work,  that  in  taking  a  house,  their  sole  inquiry  is 
—  how  near  is  it  to  the  station,  or  where  the  tram-car  puts 
you  down. 

The  result  is,  that  a  Modern  City  is  an  amorphous 
amaeba-like  aggregate  of  buildings,  wholly  without  denned 
limits,  form,  permanence,  organisation,  or  beauty  —  often 
infinitely  dreary,  monstrous,  grimy,  noisy,  and  bewildering. 
In  America  and  in  parts  of  England,  a  big  town  springs 
up  in  twenty  or  thirty  years  out  of  a  moor,  or  out  of  a  vil- 
lage on  a  mill-stream.  If  you  leave  your  native  town  — 
say  to  go  to  India,  and  return  after  five-and-twenty  years, 
you  will  not  find  your  way  about  it  ;  and  a  gasometer  or  a 
railway-siding  will  have  occupied  the  site  of  the  family 
mansion.  A  modern  city  is  the  embodiment  of  indefinite 
change,  the  unlimited  pursuit  of  new  investments  and  quick 
returns,  and  of  everybody  doing  what  he  finds  to  pay  best. 
The  idea  of  Patriotism,  Art,  Culture,  Social  Organisation, 
Religion  —  as  identified  with  the  city,  springing  out  of  it, 
stimulated  by  it  —  is  an  idea  beyond  the  conception  of 
modern  men. 

There  are  certainly  cities  in  Europe  where  some  rem- 
nant of  the  old  civic  patriotism  and  municipal  life  survives, 
as  it  does  in  Paris,  Rome,  Venice,  Genoa,  Florence,  Ham- 
burg, and  Bern.  In  the  British  islands,  perhaps  Edin- 
burgh may  be  said  to  have  retained  a  sense  of  civic  life, 
art,  and  history ;  it  is  an  organic  and  historic  city  —  not 
too  large,  and  of  singular  and  striking  natural  features. 
York,  Lincoln,  Nottingham,  Leicester,  Oxford,  are  historic 
cities  with  the  sacred  fire  still  burning  feebly  in  their 
ancient  sanctuary.  London,  if  we  limit  London  to  one- 
fortieth  of  its  area  and  one-tenth  of  its  inhabitants,  has 
still  the  consciousness  of  the  culture,  glory,  and  life  of  a 
great  city.  But  for  the  rest  of  its  area  and  population,  it 
is  lost  and  buried  under  the  monotonous  pile  of  streets, 


THE    MODERN    CITY.  24! 

over  an  area  as  large  as  a  county  —  without  history,  cul- 
ture, or  consciousness  of  any  organic  life  as  an  effective 
city. 

The  monstrous,  oppressive,  paralysing  bulk  of  modern 
London  is  becoming  one  of  the  great  diseases  of  English 
civilisation.  It  is  a  national  calamity  that  one-sixth  of  the 
entire  population  of  England  are,  as  Londoners,  cut  off 
at  once  both  from  country  life  and  from  city  life ;  for  those 
who  dwell  in  the  vast  suburbs  of  London  are  cut  off  from 
city  life  in  any  true  sense.  A  country  covered  with  houses 
is  not  a  City.  Four  or  five  millions  of  people  herded 
together  do  not  make  a  body  of  fellow-citizens.  A  mass  of 
streets  so  endless  that  it  is  hardly  possible  on  foot  to  get 
out  of  them  into  the  open  in  a  long  day's  tramp  —  streets 
so  monotonous  that,  but  for  the  names  on  the  street  cor- 
ner, they  can  hardly  be  distinguished  one  from  the  other  — 
with  suburbs  so  unorganised  and  mechanical  that  there  is 
nothing  to  recall  the  dignity  and  power  of  a  great  city  — 
with  a  population  so  movable  and  so  unsociable  that  they 
are  unknown  to  each  other  by  sight  or  name,  have  no 
interest  in  each  other's  lives,  cannot  be  induced  to  act  in 
common,  have  no  common  sympathies,  enjoyments,  or 
pride,  who  are  perpetually  hurrying,  each  his  own  way  to 
catch  his  own  train,  omnibus,  or  tram-car,  eager  to  do  a 
good  day's  business  on  the  cheapest  terms,  and  then  get 
to  some  distant  home  to  a  meal  or  to  rest.  That  is  not 
life,  nor  is  it  society.  These  huge  barracks  are  not  cities. 
Nor  can  an  organic  body  of  citizens  be  made  out  of  four 
millions  of  human  creatures  individually  grinding  out  a 
monotonous  existence. 

The  bulk,  ugliness,  flabbiness  of  modern  London  render 

city  life,  in  the  true  and  noble  sense,  impossible  or  very 

rudimentary.     It  would  be  unjust  to  pronounce  Liverpool, 

Manchester,  and  Glasgow  too  big  to  make  true  cities  — 

Q 


242  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

though  they  have  hardly  yet  found  how  to  deal  with  their 
huge  extent.  But  Paris,  with  four  times  the  area  and  the 
population  of  these,  still  has  contrived  to  remain  an  organic 
and  mighty  city.  But  Liverpool,  Manchester,  Glasgow 
(and  the  same  is  more  or  less  true  of  Birmingham,  New- 
castle, Leeds,  and  Bristol),  have  enlarged  their  boundaries 
so  rapidly  and  so  entirely  under  the  dominant  passion  of 
turning  over  capital  and  increasing  the  output  —  that 
beauty,  dignity,  culture,  and  social  life  have  been  left  to 
take  care  of  themselves,  and  the  life  of  the  labouring 
masses  (for  the  well-to-do  protect  themselves  by  living  out- 
side and  reducing  their  city  life  to  '  works '  and  an  office) 
is  monotonous  to  all  and  to  many  almost  bereft  of  physical 
comfort  and  moral  elevation.  An  Athenian  or  a  Roman 
who  might  have  risen  from  his  long  sleep  in  the  Cera- 
meicus  or  from  beside  the  Appian  Way  to  find  himself  a 
denizen  of  one  of  our  cotton  or  metal  cities,  with  its  sooty 
air  and  its  polluted  streams,  its  mesquin  market-place, 
its  dingy  lanes,  and  monotonous  factories,  with  belching 
chimneys  and  steam  '  hooters,'  and  the  endless  hurrying  to 
and  fro  of  its  melancholy  '  hands,'  would  have  fancied  him- 
self in  one  of  the  regions  of  Hades.  The  unregulated 
extension  of  the  factory  system,  of  the  steam  and  coal 
industry  to  modern  cities,  has  proved  as  destructive  of 
comfort  and  in  some  places  and  in  some  periods  as  danger- 
ous to  health  as  anything  due  to  the  defensive  necessities 
and  the  unclean  ignorance  of  the  Middle  Ages.  There 
have  been  cases  where  it  caused  a  worse  pollution  of  water 
and  of  air.  And  it  certainly  made  life  more  dismal  and 
far  less  available  for  art  and  nobility  of  soul. 

There  is  no  occasion  for  pessimism  :  and  none  but  a 
reactionist  or  a  madman  could  think  of  going  back  to 
ancient  times  whether  of  Polytheism  or  Feudalism.  There 
are  sides  of  modern  city  life,  after  all,  far  grander  than 


THE    MODERN    CITY.  243 

anything  in  the  ancient  or  the  mediaeval  world,  though 
they  are  not  so  directly  the  outcome  of  the  organic  city. 
Our  civilisation  has  long  been  a  national  rather  than  a 
civic  growth ;  and  we  look  more  to  the  nation  than  we  look 
to  the  city.  In  spite  of  steam,  smoke,  factories,  and  all 
the  selfish  recklessness  that  distorts  our  industrial  exist- 
ence, many  of  our  modern  cities,  by  zealous  sanitary 
science,  and  by  the  passion  for  warring  on  disease  that  so 
nobly  marks  our  age,  have  attained  a  death-rate  unpar- 
alleled in  the  history  of  cities,  often  reaching  to  half  the 
death-rate  common  in  mediaeval  and  Oriental  cities.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  London,  considering  its  vast 
size  and  its  special  conditions,  must  be  counted  as  standing 
at  the  head  of  the  civilised  and  uncivilised  world,  for  its 
systematic  efforts  and  final  success  in  reducing  the  death- 
rate.  It  is  now  the  least  noxious  to  life  of  all  great  cities 
of  the  world,  with  a  mortality  far  below  that  of  the  other 
capitals  of  Europe,  and  vastly  below  that  of  St.  Petersburg 
or  Calcutta.  That  means  that  we  save  year  by  year  some 
hundred  thousand  souls  in  London  alone. 

Nor  is  this  all.  Our  city  schools,  museums,  libraries, 
parks,  hospitals,  clubs,  our  charitable,  social,  and  educa- 
tional associations  (though  it  must  be  said  they  are  only  in 
part  the  outcome  of  any  city  life  or  city  organisation)  sur- 
pass anything  which  the  ancient  or  the  mediaeval  world  could 
show.  Such  cities  as  Glasgow  and  Manchester  have  at 
last  a  water  supply  that  may  fairly  compare  with  the  Ro- 
man, and  in  many  of  our  Midland  towns  the  water  supply 
is  pure,  if  not  abundant.  It  is  obvious  that  the  police,  the 
paving,  the  lighting,  and  in  a  few  cities  the  sewage  system 
far  surpasses  anything  ever  known  in  history.  Birmingham 
has  done  wonders  with  great  difficulties  and  unpromising 
materials.  And  the  gigantic  and  scientific  organisation 
of  municipal  life  in  such  capitals  as  Berlin  and  Paris  has 


244  THE    C1TY    IN    HISTORY. 

begun  to  impress  even  the  conservative  mind  of  the  Lon- 
doner, and  may  yet  find  rivals  in  our  own  mighty  metropo- 
lis. In  towns  like  Birmingham,  Nottingham,  Leeds, 
Oxford,  Bradford,  and  Huddersfield,  the  means  of  educa- 
tion and  culture  are  high  above  the  level  of  average  Eng- 
lish civilisation.  Some  of  our  more  moderate  historic 
towns  retain  or  have  regained  the  old  spirit  of  civic  life 
that  did  so  much  in  the  Middle  Ages.  We  will  not  de- 
spair. Tremendous  has  been  the  revolution  caused  by 
modern  industry.  We  have  lived  through  a  moral  earth- 
quake. But  the  energy  and  social  sympathy  which  still 
beat  in  the  heart  of  the  English  people  will  at  last  bring 
us  to  a  nobler  type. 

IV.    The  Ideal  City. 

Turn  to  the  city  as  it  might  be.  To  deal  first  with  the 
primary  physical  condition  of  size.  A  city  of  four  millions 
of  inhabitants  covering  an  area  of  more  than  one  hundred 
square  miles  is  an  impossible  city.  It  is  a  Wen,  as  Cob- 
bett  called  it,  which  prevents  all  the  real  uses  of  a  city  life. 
The  concentrated  smoke  of  a  million  chimneys,  the  collec- 
tive sewage  of  four  millions  of  souls,  the  interminable  area 
they  cover,  the  unmanageableness  of  such  a  mass  for  all 
true  social  purposes,  is  an  insuperable  difficulty  to  a  people 
who  have  not  the  genius  for  city  life  that  marks  Parisians. 
A  city  where  one  cannot  walk  of  an  evening  into  the  open, 
wherein  millions  live  and  die  without  seeing  the  spring 
flowers  and  the  June  foliage  and  the  autumn  harvest,  from 
year's  end  to  year's  end,  is  an  incubus  on  civilisation. 
Paris,  with  its  wonderful  organisation  and  system  of  lodg- 
ing in  vast  and  lofty  blocks,  is  still,  it  is  true,  a  city, 
though  one  far  too  big  and  already  becoming  unmanage- 
able. A  population  of  a  million  would  be  extreme,  even 


THE    IDEAL    CITY.  245 

for  a  capital.  The  best  type  of  city  would  not  exceed  a 
quarter  or  a  fifth  of  that  number.  The  essential  thing  in 
a  great  city  is  the  power  and  variety  that  arises  from  the 
association  of  a  very  large  body  of  organised  families  living 
a  common  life  and  combining  for  great  social  ends.  A  quar- 
ter of  a  million  or  less  gives  that  variety  and  that  power. 
When  the  number  is  extended  to  a  million  or  to  two  or  four 
millions  the  result  is  monotony  rather  than  variety  and  dis- 
organisation rather  than  association.  The  root  element  of 
city  life  is  daily  contact  and  common  society,  and  the  num- 
bers to  whom  daily  contact  is  possible  are  determined  by 
the  physical  conditions  of  the  living  man.  No  machinery 
or  inventions  can  do  more  than  facilitate  physical  contact 
in  a  moderate  degree.  But  five  millions  can  no  more  form 
a  real  city  organism  than  they  could  win  the  battle  of 
Salamis. 

It  would  be  childish  to  expect  that  Acts  of  Parliament 
can  limit  the  growth  of  cities.  But  the  increasing  enor- 
mity of  London,  and  indeed  of  Paris,  is  becoming  a  national 
danger  of  the  first  rank  to  which  legislation  may  properly 
be  addressed  in  an  indirect  and  tentative  way.  We  have 
no  place  here  to  be  discussing  the  laws  which  affect  the 
tenure  of  land.  But  if  we  find  that  country  folk  are  con- 
tinuously over  generations  flocking  into  cities,  and  that 
under  all  conditions  and  in  spite  of  the  discomforts  and 
crowding  of  cities,  it  must  be  that  country  people  do  not 
find  themselves  happy  in  their  country  homes.  The  well- 
to-do  and  the  well  educated  show  no  tendency  to  crowd 
into  cities  :  but  very  much  the  reverse.  Hence  we  have  the 
singular  phenomenon  that  whilst  the  rich  townsmen  are 
hurrying  to  pass  their  lives  in  the  country,  the  poor  coun- 
trymen are  hurrying  into  the  cities.  It  may  well  be  that, 
however  great  the  drawbacks  and  discomforts  of  modern 
cities,  and  however  poor  the  social  life  they  afford,  the 


246  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

modern  country  village  may  offer  even  less  entertainment 
and  fewer  opportunities  of  social  life.  If  that  is  so,  it  is  a 
thing  that  can  be  remedied  indirectly  by  legislation,  and 
mainly  by  a  higher  sense  of  social  obligation  on  the  part  of 
all  who  live  in  the  country.  If  great  landowners  had  taken 
up  the  lead  which  in  feudal  times  they  possessed  and  had 
proved  themselves  lords  of  the  manor  in  any  but  a  pecuni- 
ary sense,  the  draining  off  of  the  country  population  into 
the  towns  could  never  have  become  the  prominent  fact  of 
the  nineteenth  century. 

A  city  ought  to  provide  for  its  citizens  air,  water,  light 
—  absolutely  pure,  unlimited  in  quantity  and  gratuitous  to 
all.  There  is  no  good  reason  why  water  should  be  sold 
(at  any  rate  in  public  places)  more  than  air,  or  light,  or 
highways.  Air,  light,  highways,  water,  are  the  primary 
conditions  of  civilisation.  It  is  the  interest  of  all  that 
every  citizen  should  have  as  much  of  these  as  he  wants. 
There  is  no  better  reason  to  compel  an  individual  citizen 
to  buy  water  for  sanitary  uses,  than  to  compel  him  sepa- 
rately to  pay  for  a  walk  in  Hyde  Park  or  a  passage  across 
London  Bridge.  In  feudal  times  there  were  tolls  upon 
everything.  A  high  civilisation  abolishes  tolls  and  fur- 
nishes the  necessaries  of  life  to  all  equally.  Now  air,  light, 
roads,  and  water  stand  on  a  different  footing  from  food  and 
clothes.  Food  and  clothing  are  produced  in  separate 
pieces,  are  infinitely  varied,  and  are  adapted  to  an  infinite 
variety  of  personal  wants  and  tastes.  A  loaf  of  bread,  a 
beef-steak,  a  jug  of  beer,  are  individually  produced  and 
individually  consumed.  They  remain  ear-marked,  identi- 
fiable, transferable,  and  the  subject  of  property,  and  of 
commerce.  Air,  light,  water,  passage  (in  their  public  and 
collective  use),  have  not  this  character :  and  their  public 
use  should  be  free  to  all  citizens. 

We  need  the  Roman  system  of  water  supply.     Abun- 


THE    IDEAL    CITY.  247 

dant  and  pure  rivers  from  the  mountains  should  be  carried 
into  the  city,  with  fountains,  baths,  wash-houses  free  in 
every  ward  without  stint.  The  Roman  aqueducts  are 
one  of  the  few  features  of  material  civilisation  which  have 
never  been  revived  by  any  later  age.  We  are  still  suffer- 
ing under  the  mediaeval  horror  of  washing.  When  we 
had  again  adequate  aqueducts  we  might  hope  to  see  the 
rivers  and  brooks  that  pass  through  our  cities  bright  and 
clear  like  a  trout  stream,  and  '  silver  Thames '  cease  to  be 
a  term  of  reproach.  Every  chimney  would  consume  its 
own  smoke ;  every  sewer  would  be  wholesome,  for  all 
noxious  gases  would  be  pumped  up  into  safe  spaces  ;  all 
refuse  would  be  straightway  disinfected  and  consumed. 
To  use  a  stream  as  a  drain,  to  discharge  refuse  into  any 
public  place  or  course,  to  emit  noisome  odours  or  danger- 
ous gases  into  any  public  thing,  to  do  or  to  suffer  anything 
that  could  spread  infection,  would  be  high  treason  against 
humanity  visited  with  the  extreme  rigour  of  the  law. 

The  whole  conditions  of  our  industrial  life  would  be 
reorganised  ;  till  our  factory  and  workshop  habits  would 
be  as  repulsive  to  our  descendants  as  a  mediaeval  charnel- 
house  is  to  us  to-day.  It  is  not  merely  in  the  matter  of 
hours  that  we  need  reform,  but  in  the  physical  and  even 
moral  conditions  of  work.  A  factory,  or  a  workshop, 
wherein  men,  women,  and  children  are  employed  day  by 
day,  would  be  regarded  as  an  outrage  on  civilisation,  if  its 
physical  conditions  were  not  as  free  from  anything  that  can 
endanger  health  as  the  drawing-room  of  a  wealthy  family. 
And  it  would  be  a  sort  of  public  scandal  that  it  should 
remain  as  repulsive  and  depressing  as  the  average  cotton- 
mill  of  Lancashire. 

The  entire  treatment  of  sickness  and  of  mortality  would 
be  reorganised.  Every  house,  or  block  of  houses,  for  the 
collective  system  of  tenements  must  ultimately  obtain  in 


248  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

cities,  would  be  arranged  with  due  provision  for  the  care 
of  the  sick  and  of  the  dead.  Infirmaries,  disinfectants, 
ambulances,  mortuaries  on  a  large  scale,  will  have  to  be 
arranged,  systematically  and  scientifically,  both  for  public 
and  for  private  use.  Our  houses  and  blocks  will  be  pro- 
vided with  appliances  needful  in  sickness,  accident,  birth, 
convalescence,  and  death.  Cremation  will  take  the  place 
of  the  ghastly  system  of  interment  —  Cremation  with 
facilities  for  the  due  disposal  of  the  ashes.  Cremation 
has  made  but  little  way  yet  in  superseding  the  growing 
evils  of  interment,  because  it  has  not  yet  provided  for  the 
religio  loci  and  the  cherished  continuity  of  the  'remains  ' 
of  the  departed.  Rightly  understood,  Cremation  offers 
just  the  same  opportunities  for  the  local  consecration  of 
these  remains  as  does  burial  —  the  same  opportunities  and 
far  better.  The  ashes  which  are  the  residuum  of  crema- 
tion may  be  treated  with  the  same  religious  reverence  that 
we  have  been  accustomed  to  show  to  the  putrescent  con- 
tents of  our  hideous  coffins  —  the  same  reverence  in  far 
more  beautiful  and  familiar  ways.  We  have  made  the 
fatal  mistake  of  assuming  that  the  proper  care  of  our  dead 
ends  with  the  furnace  of  the  Crematorium.  No  more  so 
than  it  ends  with  the  undertaker's  hearse.  The  pure 
ashes  of  the  beloved  dead  must  be  reverently  inclosed  in 
urns  or  sarcophagi  of  any  kind  we  choose :  and  these  urns 
with  the  innocent  ashes  within  may  be  placed  in  ceme- 
teries, if  we  prefer,  or  better  still  in  columbaria  and 
chapels  in  the  beautiful  Campo  Santos  that  will  arise  in 
the  precincts  and  public  places  of  the  city  itself. 

The  hospital  system  must  be  revised.  Every  hospital 
would  be  strictly  isolated — placed  in  the  purest  air, 
incapable  of  spreading  infection,  and  arranged  for  con- 
stant and  radical  disinfection.  For  many  purposes,  it 
would  consist  mainly  of  movable  iron  sheds  in  some 


THE    IDEAL    CITY.  249 

open  ground,  continually  removed,  constantly  purified, 
and  the  consumable  parts  burnt.  Into  these  infirmaries 
the  sick  would  be  carried  by  railways,  specially  constructed 
on  the  ambulance  system.  A  few  accident  or  special 
wards  might  be  retained  in  isolated  buildings,  in  conven- 
ient spots  in  the  city,  for  emergencies  or  definite  cases. 
But  all  men  of  science  know  the  inevitable  evils  of  vast 
hospitals  in  the  midst  of  crowded  cities.  The  system  con- 
tinues, not  for  the  sake  of  the  sick,  but  for  the  convenience 
of  the  staff,  and  for  facilities  of  access  generally.  An 
abnormal  death-rate  in  the  hospital,  and  continual  infec- 
tion around  it,  are  still  endured,  in  order  that  the  medical 
attendants  and  their  pupils  may  have  their  cases  at  hand, 
that  the  organisation  of  a  complex  system  of  carriage  may 
be  avoided,  and  partly  no  doubt  that  the  world  may  have 
ever  before  their  eyes,  in  some  conspicuous  site  in  the 
city,  a  pompous  and  costly  edifice,  which,  on  scientific 
grounds,  should  never  be  placed  anywhere  at  all,  and  least 
of  all  on  that  central  spot.  To  expose  a  family  to  infec- 
tion, to  spread  contagion  in  a  district,  by  the  treatment 
of  the  sick,  or  the  dead,  or  by  any  kind  of  refuse,  to  pol- 
lute open  water,  on  a  public  way  or  place,  would  be  an  act 
of  ruffianism  and  sacrilege  at  once.  Sickness  from  all 
forms  of  infection  and  contagion  would  be  reduced  to  the 
minimum  of  inevitable  accident.  The  death-rate  of  such 
a  city  would  fall  from  20  or  30  per  thousand  to  12  or  14 
per  thousand. 

Next  to  pure  air,  water,  sunlight,  free  ways,  and  pro- 
tection against  blood-poisoning,  human  life  needs  exercise 
.and  recreation  for  body  and  limb.  The  city  of  the  future 
will  have  its  squares,  gardens,  parks,  play-grounds,  and 
gymnastic  courts,  free  to  all,  and  within  reach  of  all.  No 
child,  boy,  or  girl  will  be  forced  to  play  in  a  gutter;  no 
youths  will  be  reduced  to  lounge  about  the  street.  The 


25O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

play-ground  will  be  open,  to  all,  and  almost  within  a  mile 
of  the  house,  or  it  will  be  almost  useless.  There  are  two 
towns  in  England  where  that  great  institution,  the  Play- 
ground, is  adequately  developed  :  these  are  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  where  some  think  it  is  almost  overdone ;  and 
Leicester,  Derby,  and  some  Midland  and  Northern  towns 
are  not  wholly  unprovided.  But  the  opportunities  which 
have  long  been  secured  to  a  few  rich  students,  and  to 
some  sportsmen  elsewhere,  will  be  open  to  all  citizens  in 
the  city  of  the  future,  as  they  were  at  Athens,  Sparta, 
Syracuse,  or  Rome. 

A  city,  worthy  of  such  a  name,  should  offer  to  all  its 
citizens  noble  public  buildings,  and  impressive  monuments 
within  the  reach  of  all.  The  ancient  rule  was  to  live  at 
home  in  simple  lodgings,  and  in  public  to  have  ever  in 
view  beautiful  and  stately  public  buildings  — 

'  Privatus  Dlis  census  erat  brevis  — 
Commune  magnum.' 

We  reverse  all  this.  We  put  the  extreme  of  luxury  that 
we  can  command  into  our  homes,  and  we  starve  our  pub- 
lic places.  In  the  ancient  world,  to  present  noble  monu- 
ments continually  to  the  eyes  of  the  citizens,  was  regarded 
as  one  of  the  main  uses  of  a  City.  With  us,  public  monu- 
ments are  too  often  suspected  of  being  a  corporation  job, 
the  means  of  getting  some  obscure  artist  a  commission, 
or  furnishing  the  Mayor  with  a  knighthood,  when  the 
Prince  or  Princess  'inaugurates'  the  opening  ceremony. 
'Inaugurate'  once  meant  a  solemn  and  auspicious  relig- 
ious act.  In  Athens,  Rome,  Florence,  Venice,  Verona, 
Cologne,  Rouen,  or  Winchester  —  that  is  in  classical  or  in 
mediaeval  ages  —  the  possession  of  a  noble  city,  crowded 
with  splendid  and  historic  monuments,  was  the  cherished 
birthright  of  the  citizen  —  a  potent  source  of  civilisation. 
As  it  was  once  —  so  it  will  be  again ! 


THE    IDEAL    CITY.  25! 

The  citizen  of  the  future  will  live  in  a  City,  through 
which  silver  streams  will  flow,  in  which  the  air  will  be 
spotless  of  soot,  when  water  will  bubble  forth  in  fountains 
and  reservoirs  at  every  corner,  where  gardens,  promenades, 
open  squares,  flowers,  green  lawns,  porticos,  and  noble 
monuments  will  abound ;  the  air  and  water  as  fresh  as  at 
Bern,  with  gardens,  statues  as  plentiful  as  they  are  in 
Paris,  and  more  beautiful  in  art.  At  Rome,  the  citizen 
was  reminded  at  every  turn  of  his  country's  history  by 
some  monument,  shrine,  bust,  or  statue.  There  is  but  one 
city  of  the  modern  world  —  the  French  capital,  where  any 
attempt  is  made  to  develop  this  noble  instrument  of  city 
life. 

Museums,  statues,  galleries,  colleges,  schools,  and  pub- 
lic halls  will  no  longer  be  concentrated  in  overgrown  capi- 
tals ;  they  will  be  universal  in  every  moderate  town.  No 
town  would  be  worth  living  in,  if  it  does  not  offer  a  free 
library,  a  good  art-gallery,  lecture  and  music  halls,  baths, 
and  gymnasia  —  free  to  all  and  within  reach  of  all.  To 
use  all  these,  we  shall  need  a  day  of  rest  in  the  week,  as 
well  as  a  day  of  worship  on  Sunday.  Every  citizen  will 
be  free  of  all  the  resources  needed  to  cultivate  his  body, 
his  mind,  his  heart:  —  his  enjoyment  of  life,  health,  skill, 
and  grace,  his  sense  of  beauty,  his  desire  for  society,  his 
thirst  for  knowledge.  If  he  does  not  use  these  resources, 
the  fault  will  be  his. 

These  things  are  not  to  be  had  by  Acts  of  Parliament, 
nor  by  multiplying  Inspectors,  nor  perhaps  by  any  single 
machinery  whatever.  Ideals  are  realised  slowly,  by  long 
efforts,  after  many  failures  and  constant  mistakes.  To 
reach  ideals  we  have  to  reach  a  higher  social  morality,  an 
enlarged  conception  of  human  life,  a  more  humane  type 
of  religious  duty. 


CHAPTER   IX. 

ROME    REVISITED.1 

HE  who  revisits  Rome  to-day  in  these  busy  times  of 
King  Umberto,  having  known  the  Eternal  City  of  the  last 
generation  in  the  torpid  reign  of  Pio  Nono,  cannot  stifle 
the  poignant  sense  of  having  lost  one  of  the  most  rare 
visions  that  this  earth  had  ever  to  present.  The  Colos- 
seum, it  is  true,  the  Forum,  the  Vatican,  and  St.  Peter's 
are  there  still  ;  the  antiquarians  make  constant  new 
discoveries  —  fresh  sites,  statues,  palaces,  tombs,  and 
museums  are  year  by  year  revealed  to  the  eager  tourist ; 
and  many  a  cloister  and  chapel,  once  hermetically  closed, 
is  now  a  public  show.  But  the  light  and  poetry  have  gone 
out  of  Rome  for  ever.  Vast  historic  convents  are  cold  and 
silent  as  the  grave,  and  the  Papal  city  is  like  a  mediaeval 
town  under  interdict.  French  boulevards  are  being  driven 
through  the  embattled  strongholds  of  Colonnas  and  Orsinis, 
and  omnibus  and  tram-car  roll  through  the  Forum  of 
Trajan,  and  by  the  Golden  House  of  Nero.  The  yellow 
Tiber  now  peacefully  flows  between  granite  quays,  but  the 
mouldering  palaces  and  the  festooned  arches  that  Piranesi 
loved  have  been  improved  away. 

One  who  is  neither  codino,  ultramontane,  nor  pessimist 
may  still  utter  one  groan  of  regret  for  the  halo  that  once 
enveloped  Rome.  We  may  know  that  it  was  inevitable, 
that  it  was  the  price  of  a  nation's  life,  and  yet  feel  the 
sorrow  which  is  due  to  the  passing  away  of  some  majestic 

1  Fortnightly  Review,  May  1893,  No.  317,  vol.  53. 
252 


ROME    REVISITED.  253 

thing  that  the  world  can  never  see  again.  It  is  now  twenty 
years  since  the  late  Professor  Freeman,  then  visiting  Rome 
for  the  first  time,  wrote  as  his  forecast  that  if  Rome,  as 
the  capital  of  Italy,  should  grow  and  flourish,  a  great  part 
of  its  unique  charm  would  be  lost,  and  the  havoc  to  be 
wrought  in  its  antiquities  would  be  frightful.  The  havoc 
is  wrought ;  the  charm  is  gone,  in  spite  of  startling  dis- 
coveries and  whole  museums  full  of  new  antiquities.  It 
had  to  be. 

In  the  space  of  some  thirty  years  I  have  visited  Rome 
four  times,  at  long  intervals,  and  each  time  I  groan  anew. 
I  was  Italianissimo  in  my  hot  youth,  and  I  am  assuredly, 
not  Papalino  in  my  maturer  age.  I  rejoice  with  the  new 
life  of  the  Italian  people  ;  I  know  that  for  the  regenerated 
nation  Rome  is  essential  as  its  capital ;  I  know  that  a 
growing  modern  city  must  wear  the  aspect  of  modern 
civilisation.  I  repudiate  the  whining  of  sentimentalists 
over  the  conditions  of  modern  progress  ;  and  the  advice 
which  Napoleon's  creatures  gave  to  the  Romans,  'to  be 
content  with  the  contemplation  of  their  ruins,'  has  the  true 
ring  of  an  oppressor.  We  acknowledge  all  that,  and  are 
no  obscurantists  to  shudder  at  a  railroad  with  Ruskinian 
affectation.  But  yet,  to  those  who  loved  the  poetry  of  old 
Papal  Rome,  the  prose  of  the  modernised  new  Rome  is  a 
sad  and  instructive  memory. 

When  I  first  saw  Rome,  it  was  not  connected  by  any 
railway  with  Northern  Italy.  We  had  to  travel  by  the 
road,  and  I  cannot  forget  the  weird  effect  of  that  Roman 
Maremma,  purple  and  crimson  with  an  autumn  sunset  ; 
the  buffaloes,  and  the  wild  cattlemen  and  pecorari  in  sheep- 
skins ;  the  old-world  coaches  and  postilions  ;  the  desolate 
plain  broken  by  ruins  and  castles  ;  the  mediaeval  absurdi- 
ties of  Papal  officialism  ;  the  suffumigations  and  the  visas; 
the  cumbrous  pomposity  of  some  Roman  principi  returning 


254  THE   CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

from  villeggiatura  —  it  was  as  though  one  had  passed  by 
enchantment  into  the  seventeenth  century,  with  its  pictur- 
esque barbarism,  and  one  quite  expected  a  guerilla  band  of 
horsemen  to  issue  from  the  castle  of  Montalto. 

And  then  Rome  itself,  so  perfectly  familiar  that  it 
seemed  like  a  mere  returning  to  the  old  haunt  of  child- 
hood, with  its  fern-clad  ruins  standing  in  open  spaces, 
gardens,  or  vineyards  ;  the  huge  solitudes  within  the  walls ; 
the  cattle  and  the  stalls  beneath  the  trees  on  the  Campo 
Vaccino,  forty  feet  above  the  spot  where  now  professors 
lecture  to  crowds  in  the  recent  excavations ;  the  grotesque 
parade  of  cardinals  and  monsignori  ;  the  narrow,  ill-lighted 
streets ;  the  swarm  of  monks,  friars,  and  prelates  of  every 
order  and  race  ;  the  air  of  mouldering  abandonment  in  the 
ancient  city,  as  of  some  corner  of  mediaeval  Europe  left 
forgotten  and  untouched  by  modern  progress,  with  all  the 
historic  glamour,  the  pictorial  squalor,  the  Turkish  routine, 
all  the  magnificence  of  obsolete  forms  of  civilisation  which 
clung  round  the  Vatican  and  were  seen  there  only  in 
Western  Europe. 

It  had  to  go,  and  it  is  gone ;  and  Rome,  in  twenty  or 
thirty  years,  has  become  like  any  other  European  city  big, 
noisy,  vulgar,  overgrown,  Frenchified,  and  syndicate-ridden, 
hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  Lyons  or  Turin,  except 
that  it  has  in  the  middle  of  its  streets  some  enormous 
masses  of  ruin,  many  huge,  empty  convents,  and  some 
vast  churches,  apparently  abandoned  by  the  Church.  But 
the  ruins,  which  used  to  stand  in  a  rural  solitude  like 
Stonehenge  or  Rievaulx,  are  now  mere  piles  of  stone  in 
crowded  streets,  like  the  Palais  des  Thermes  at  Paris. 
The  sacred  sites  of  Forum  and  Roma  Quadrata  are  now 
objects  in  a  museum.  The  Cloaca  are  embedded  in  the 
new  stone  quay,  and  are  become  a  mere  '  exhibit,'  like 
York  House  Water-Gate  in  our  own  embankment.  The 


ROME    REVISITED.  255 

wild  foliage  and  the  memorial  altars  have  been  torn  out  of 
the  Colosseum,  and  the  -#£lian  Bridge  is  overshadowed  by 
a  new  iron  enormity.  Rome,  which,  thirty  years  ago,  was 
a  vision  of  the  past,  is  to-day  a  busy  Italian  town,  with  a 
dozen  museums,  striving  to  become  a  third-rate  Paris. 

The  mediaeval  halo  is  gone,  but  the  hard  facts  remain. 
For  to  the  historian  Rome  must  always  be  the  central  city 
of  this  earth  —  the  spot  towards  which  all  earlier  history 
of  mankind  must  in  the  end  converge  —  from  which  all 
modern  history  must  issue.  Rome  is  the  true  microcosm, 
wherein  the  vast  panorama  of  human  civilisation  is  re- 
flected as  on  a  mirror.  It  is  this  diversity,  continuity,  and 
world-wide  range  of  interest  which  place  it  apart  above  all 
other  cities  of  men.  This  one  is  more  lovely,  that  one  is 
more  complete  ;  another  city  is  vaster,  or  another  has  some 
unique  and  special  glory.  But  no  other  city  of  the  world 
approaches  Rome  in  the  enormous  span  of  its  history,  and 
in  this  character  of  being  the  centre,  as  the  Greeks  said 
the  o/z$aA,o5,  if  not  of  this  planet,  at  least  of  Europe. 

From  this  point  of  view,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  the 
recent  changes  which  have  destroyed  the  poetry  of  Rome 
have  greatly  enlarged  its  antiquarian  interest.  What  the 
poet  and  the  painter  have  lost  the  historian  has  gained. 
Regarded  as  a  museum  of  archaeology,  the  city  is  far  richer 
to  the  student.  And  that  not  merely  by  multiplication  of 
remains,  statues,  and  carvings,  similar  to  what  we  had,  but 
by 'new  discoveries  which  have  modified  our  knowledge  of 
the  history  of  the  city.  The  continually  growing  mass  of 
pre-historic  relics,  the  Etruscan  tombs  and  foundations  on 
the  Aventine  and  the  Esquiline,  the  early  fortifications  of 
the  Palatine,  the  remains  of  regal  Rome,  the  systematic 
exploration  of  the  Forum  and  the  Palatine,  the  house  of 
the  vestals,  the  contents  of  the  Kircher  Museum,  and  of 
the  new  Museum  in  the  baths  of  Diocletian,  the  excavation 


THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

of  the  Colosseum,  and  of  the  palace  of  Nero,  the  com- 
plete tracing  of  the  Servian  circumvallation,  and  all  that 
has  been  done  to  reopen  cemeteries  and  tombs  —  have 
given  a  new  range  and  distinctness  to  the  history  of  Rome 
as  a  whole. 

We  must  now  extend  that  history  backwards  by  cen- 
turies before  the  mythical  age  of  Romulus  and  his  tribes- 
men on  the  Palatine  ;  and  we  know  that  somewhere  on  the 
Seven  Hills  there  once  dwelt  one  of  the  most  ancient  pre- 
historic races  of  Europe.  Even  the  speculative  builder 
and  the  hated  railroads  have  enriched  the  museums  and 
opened  unexpected  treasures'  to  the  antiquarian.  One  is 
forced  to  confess  that  to  historical  research  new  fields  have 
been  opened,  even  whilst  the  unique  vision  of  the  Eternal 
City  faded  away  as  quickly  as  a  winter  sunset.  The  Caesars 
found  Rome  of  brick,  and  left  it  of  marble.  The  House  of 
Savoy  found  it  a  majestic  ruin  ;  they  have  made  it  an  inex- 
haustible museum. 

Compare  Rome  with  other  famous  cities,  which  far  sur- 
pass it  in  mediaeval  associations  —  with  Florence,  Venice, 
Rouen,  Oxford,  Prague.  They  present  at  most  four  or 
five  centuries  of  the  Middle  Ages  with  vivid  power  and 
charm  :  but  this  is  only  one  chapter  in  the  history  of  Rome. 
Athens,  Constantinople,  Venice,  are  more  beautiful.  And 
if  Constantinople  surpasses  Rome  in  the  dramatic  contrast 
of  Asia  and  Europe,  and  the  secular  combat  between  the 
East  and  the  West,  Byzantium  was  but  a  late  imitation  of 
Rome,  and  the  tremendous  scenes  which  the  Bosphorus  has 
witnessed  seem  but  episodes  when  compared  with  the  long 
annals  of  the  Tiber.  Constantinople,  indeed,  was  a  Rome 
transported  bodily  to  the  East.  Paris  and  London  certainly 
surpass  Rome  in  that  they  record  a  thousand  years  of  the 
destiny  of  nations  still  growing,  and  that  we  can  hear  in 
their  streets  the  surging  of  a  mighty  life  to  which  that  of 


ROME    REVISITED. 

Rome  is  now  a  poor  provincial  copy.  But  the  thousand 
years  of  Paris  and  of  London  are  but  a  span  in  the  count- 
less years  of  the  Eternal  City.  All  roads  lead  to  Rome  : 
all  capitals  aim  at  reviving  the  image  and  effect  of  the 
Imperial  City :  all  history  ends  with  Rome,  or  begins  with 
Rome. 

There  are  three  elements  wherein  the  historical  value  of 
Rome  surpasses  that  of  any  extant  city  :  first,  the  enormous 
continuity  of  its  history  ;  next,  the  diversity  of  that  inter- 
est ;  and  lastly,  the  cosmopolitan  range  of  its  associations. 
These  hill-crests  beside  the  Tiber  have  been  the  home  of 
a  disciplined  people  (we  must  now  believe)  for  some  three 
thousand  years,  and  it  may  well  be  much  more  ;  and  during 
the  whole  of  that  vast  period  there  has  been  no  absolute  or 
prolonged  break.  Athens,  Jerusalem,  Antioch,  Damascus, 
Alexandria,  Syracuse,  Marseilles,  and  York,  whatever  they 
may  once  have  been,  whatever  they  may  have  recently 
become,  fell  out  of  the  vision  of  history  for  long  centuries 
together,  like  some  variable  star  out  of  heaven,  and  sank 
into  insignificance  and  oblivion.  To  very  many  the  city  of 
David  and  of  the  Passion  has  absorbing  interests,  such  as 
no  other  spot  on  earth  can  approach;  just  as  to  the  scholar 
the  scene  from  the  Pnyx  at  Athens  calls  up  a  sum  of 
memories  of  unique  intensity  and  delight.  But  the  four 
transcendent  centuries,  when  Athens  was  the  eye  of  Greece, 
the  eye  of  the  thinking  world,  were  followed  by  a  thou- 
sand years  when  Athens  was  an  obscure  village  ;  and  if 
the  ancient  history  of  Jerusalem  was  longer  than  that  of 
Athens,  it  has  been  followed  by  a  still  more  overwhelming 
fall. 

All  other  famous  cities  of  the  ancient  world  have  waned 

and  fallen,  in  some  cases,  as  with  Athens,  Alexandria,  and 

Marseilles,  to  rise  again  out  of  a  sleep  of  ages.     Or  if,  like 

Paris  and  London,  they  are  growing  still,  it  is  during  some 

R 


258  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

four  or  five  centuries  only  that  they  have  been  the  foremost 
cities  of  the  world.  But  for  two  thousand  years  Rome  has 
enjoyed  an  unbroken  pre-eminence,  for  five  centuries  as 
the  temporal  mistress  of  the  civilised  world,  and  for  some 
fifteen  centuries  as  the  spiritual  head  of  the  Catholic  world. 
This  dominant  place  in  human  evolution,  prolonged  over 
such  immense  periods  of  time  in  unbroken  continuity, 
makes  Rome  the  spot  on  earth  where  the  story  of  civili- 
sation can  be  locally  centred  and  visibly  recorded. 

This  is  the  real  power  and  the  true  lesson  of  Rome  ;  and 
in  a  dim  way,  it  was  felt  by  our  ancestors  who  in  the  olden 
days  made  the  'grand  tour'  to  enrich  their  galleries  and  to 
confer  with  virtuosi,  or  who  in  a  later  age  followed  the  foot- 
steps of  Corinne,  Goethe,  and  Byron.  Something  of  the 
kind  remained  down  to  the  time  of  Pio  Nono.  There  was 
still  a  certain  unity  of  effect  in  Rome ;  and  even  the  more 
frivolous  tourists  had  some  sense  of  that  over-mastering 
human  destiny  which  caused  Byron  to  break  forth  — 

'  O  Rome,  my  country,  city  of  the  soul! ' 

But  all  that  has  happened  in  the  last  twenty  years  has  de- 
stroyed that  visual  impression.  The  sudden  swelling  forth 
of  the  city  into  a  modern  busy  town  three  or  four  times 
larger  than  the  old  sleepy  city  of  the  popes,  the  suppression 
of  the  convents  and  the  external  ceremonial,  and  the  sullen 
withdrawal  of  the  Papacy,  the  deadly  war  between  modern 
democracy  and  ultramontane  ecclesiasticism,  the  flooding 
of  the  old  city  with  the  triumphs  of  the  modern  builder, 
and  the  Haussmannisation  of  the  most  romantic  of  Euro- 
pean cities  —  all  this  has  made  it  an  effort  of  the  abstract 
mind  to  look  on  Rome  as  the  historic  capital  ;  and  as  to 
the  'city  of  the  soul,'  one  might  as  easily  imagine  it  at 
Lyons,  Milan,  or  indeed  Chicago.  And  thus,  the  recent 
modernisation  of  Rome  has  destroyed  the  sense  of  historical 


ROME    REVISITED.  259 

continuity,  that  unique  effect  of  Rome  as  '  mother  of  dead 
empires/  and  all  that  Byron  poured  out  with  his  passionate 
imagination  and  his  scrambling  rhymes.  In  the  days  of 
Byron,  Goethe,  and  Shelley,  as  it  had  been  in  the  days  of 
Claude,  of  Piranesi,  of  Madame  de  Stael,  and  Gibbon,  as  it 
still  was  down  to  the  days  of  Andersen,  Hawthorne,  and 
Browning,  Rome  was  itself  a  poem  :  a  sombre,  majestic, 
most  moving  dirge  —  but  an  artistic  whole  —  a  poem.  The 
Italian  kingdom  and  modern  progress  have  made  it  a 
capital  up-to-date,  with  a  most  voluminous  Dictionary  of 
Antiquities. 

But  the  new  edition  of  the  Dictionary  of  Antiquities,  as 
edited  by  the  House  of  Savoy,  from  1870  to  1893,  is 
immensely  enlarged  and  almost  rewritten.  The  brain  may 
still  recover  more  than  the  eye  has  lost.  But  it  has  become 
a  strain  on  the  imagination  in  the  last  decade  of  this  cen- 
tury to  revive  in  the  mind's  eye  that  historic  continuity  of 
the  Eternal  City,  which  till  past  the  middle  of  this  century 
was  vividly  presented  even  to  the  uninstructed  eye.  And 
the  melancholy  result  is  this  —  that  Rome  to-day  is  par- 
celled out  into  heterogeneous  and  discordant  sections, 
which  of  old  were  simply  impressive  contrasts  in  the  same 
picture ;  and  they  who  visit  Rome  with  some  special 
interest  find  nothing  to  attract  them  to  the  rival  interests 
and  the  antagonistic  worlds. 

They  who  go  to  Rome  for  the  same  reasons  that  they 
go  to  Paris  or  Vienna,  see  little  at  Rome  more  than  in 
any  other  European  capital,  unless  it  be  a  few  masses  of 
ruins,  and  some  enormous  palaces  and  churches.  The 
scholar  and  the  antiquarian  buries  himself  in  museums, 
libraries,  or  excavations  ;  and  to-day  it  hardly  strikes  him 
at  all  that  he  is  in  the  palpitating  heart  of  Christendom, 
or  that  he  is  passing  blindfold  amidst  some  of  the  most 
poetic  scenes  in  the  world.  Of  old  this  pathos  and  charm 


26O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

pierced  even  the  dullest  pedant's  heart  ;  but  now,  with 
avenues,  tram-cars,  electric  lighting,  and  miles  of  Ameri- 
can hotels,  he  does  not  notice  in  modern  Rome  the  rare 
glimpses  of  mediaeval  Rome.  And  the  Catholic  pilgrim 
is  so  hot  with  rage  and  foreboding  that  to  ask  him  to 
acknowledge  either  beauty  or  interest  outside  the  cause 
of  the  Vatican,  is  a  heartless  mockery  of  all  that  he  holds 
highest.  And  thus  Rome,  which  to  our  fathers  had  the 
soothing  effect  of  a  Mass  by  Palestrina  or  a  glowing  sun- 
set after  storm,  now  fills  us  with  the  sense  of  deadly 
passions,  coarse  desecration  of  what  man  has  long  held 
sacred,  the  incongruous  mixture  of  irreconcilable  ideas 
and  mutual  scorn.  Bruno  and  Mazzini  jostle  Loyola  and 
the  Bambino.  Tramways  and  iron  bridges  override  basili- 
cas and  temples. 

It  is  all  the  more  needful  then  for  those  who  love  the 
great  historic  cities  and  their  lessons  to  strive  against 
the  sectional  aspects  of  Rome  and  to  insist  on  its  historic 
unity,  in  spite  of  the  ravages  of  modern  progress.  Many, 
of  course,  will  still  go  to  Rome  for  its  picnics  or  the  court 
balls  of  Queen  Margherita,  to  hunt  the  fox  or  to  pick  up 
a  curio,  to  copy  a  manuscript  or  a  Guido,  to  catch  a  glimpse 
of  the  Pope,  or  to  crawl  up  the  Scala  Santa.  But  the 
truth  remains  that,  for  those  who  have  eyes  to  see,  the 
pre-eminence  of  Rome  as  a  city  consists  in  the  combi- 
nation and  succession  of  all  its  varied  interests.  And 
although  the  continuity  of  its  history  is  now  far  less 
directly  conspicuous,  and  although  on  the  surface  Rome 
has  now  been  promoted  (or  degraded)  to'  the  level  of  any 
other  European  capital,  the  record  of  the  past  is  becom- 
ing far  richer  and  more  legible  for  those  who  with  patience 
continue  to  read  it ;  and  it  is  still  possible  to  forget  ambi- 
tious municipalism  and  the  pandemonium  or  the  jerry- 
builder,  even  whilst  accepting  the  mosaics  and  the  bronzes 


ROME    REVISITED.  26 1 

their  workmen  have  turned  up,  and  the  walls  of  the  kings 
which  they  have  laid  bare  and  pierced. 

The  various  interests  all  group  themselves  under  three 
heads  :  the  Rome  of  antiquity,  the  Rome  of  the  Church, 
the  Rome  of  poetry,  romance,  architecture,  painting,  sculpt- 
ure, music.  Down  to  the  middle  of  this  century,  these 
were  blended  unconsciously  into  a  certain  harmony ;  and 
it  was  the  mysterious  unison  of  these  separate  chords 
which  has  inspired  so  much  poetry  and  art  from  the  age 
of  the  Farncsina  down  to  that  of  Transformation.  Since 
the  middle  of  the  century  and  the  tremendous  events  of 
1849,  it  has  been  an  effort  of  the  imagination  to  catch 
the  harmony  rather  than  discord.  And  in  the  last  twenty 
years,  since  the  entrance  of  the  king  of  Italy,  the  effort 
has  become  year  by  year  more  difficult.  But  with  patience 
it  may  still  be  clone.  And  we  may  yet  venture  to  plead  for 
Rome  that,  shorn  as  she  is  of  her  old  unique  magic  and 
power,  she  remains  still  the  greatest  historical  school  in 
the  world,  and  has  not  even  yet  descended  to  the  level 
of  Nice  or  Hombourg. 

The  visible  record  of  antiquity  is  continuous  for  at  least 
a  thousand  years  —  indeed  between  the  Column  of  Phocas 
and  the  earliest  tombs  we  may  possibly  count  an  interval 
far  longer.  For  five  centuries  at  least,  down  to  the  final 
completion  of  the  Rome  of  the  East,  Rome  of  the  West 
was  the  spot  where  the  whole  force  of  the  ancient  world 
was  concentrated — its  wealth,  its  art,  its  science,  its  mate- 
rial, intellectual,  and  moral  power.  This  planet  has  never 
witnessed  before  or  since  such  concentration  on  one  spot 
of  the  earth  as  took  place  about  the  age  of  Trajan,  and 
let  us  trust  it  will  never  witness  it  again.  From  the  Clyde 
to  the  Euphrates,  from  the  Caucasus  to  the  Sahara,  the 
earth  was  ransacked  for  all  that  was  pleasant,  beautiful, 
or  useful,  whether  in  the  produce  of  nature  or  in  the  arts 


262  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

of  man.  And  it  was  flung  down  together  on  the  banks  of 
the  Tiber  with  a  wild  profusion  and  with  a  lavish  magnifi- 
cence which  has  never  been  equalled,  though  sometimes 
imitated. 

To  that  dazzling  world  of  power,  beauty,  luxury,  and 
vice,  there  succeeded  the  Christian  Church  with  its  fifteen 
centuries  of  unbroken  organic  life.  This — far  the  longest 
and  most  important  movement  in  the  history  of  mankind 
—  yet  forms  but  one  element  in  the  history  of  the  Eternal 
City,  and  the  one  element  which  to  most  Protestant  tour- 
ists is  the  least  conspicuous,  if  not  almost  forgotten.  But 
the  succession  of  spiritual  empire  to  the  inheritance  of 
temporal  empire  in  Rome  is  perhaps  of  all  phenomena  in 
history  the  most  fascinating  and  the  most  profound,  with 
its  subtle  analogies  and  infinite  contrasts,  with  its  sublime 
profession  of  disdain  and  its  irresistible  instinct  for  adapta- 
tion, its  savage  spirit  of  destruction  combined  with  an  un- 
conscious genius  of  imitation.  For  the  Church  took  the 
classical  form  for  its  model,  and  ended  by  setting  it  up  as 
a  revelation,  even  whilst  engaged  in  cursing  it  in  words 
and  demolishing  it  in  act. 

That  New  Birth  of  free  life  which  we  call  Humanism, 
or  the  Revival,  or  Renascence,  was  soon  drawn  towards 
Rome,  and  indeed  for  a  time  had  its  inspiration  from  the 
Papal  world  itself.  Though  Rome  was  not  its  birthplace 
nor  in  any  sense  its  natural  home,  yet  Rome  drew  to  her- 
self the  Tuscan  and  Lombard  genius  as  she  had  drawn 
the  Attic  and  the  Alexandrian  genius  to  her  before  ;  and 
thus  Rome  became  at  last  the  great  theatre  for  the  Renas- 
cence, the  stage  whence  its  most  potent  influence  over 
Europe  was  manifested  and  shed  abroad.  Not  that  any 
Roman  approached  in  genius  the  great  Florentines  or 
Venetians,  or  that  Rome  was  at  any  time  so  noble  a 
school  of  imagination  as  Florence  or  Venice,  or  even 


ROME    REVISITED.  263 

Siena  or  Verona.  But  the  vast  resources  collected  in 
Rome,  the  fabulous  power  of  her  great  ecclesiastics,  and 
the  central  and  European  position  she  held,  made  Rome 
for  some  three  centuries  one  of  the  main  adopted  cradles 
of  the  Renascence.  And  if  we  include  all  the  work  and 
influence  of  Bramante,  Michael  Angelo,  Raffaelle,  Bembo, 
Cellini,  Palestrina,  Guido,  Bernini,  the  architecture,  the 
painting,  the  sculpture,  the  mosaics,  the  engraving,  the 
drama,  the  music,  the  scholarship,  the  poetry,  Rome  must 
be  counted  as  the  most  influential  centre  of  the  Renascence. 

It  was  not  effected  by  native  Romans,  nor  was  it  the 
offspring  of  a  local  school.  Much  of  its  influence  was 
meretricious,  and  much  of  it  was  essentially  debasing. 
But  it  governed,  by  its  evil  as  much  as  by  its  strength, 
the  thought  of  Europe ;  and  if  we  take  the  whole  range 
of  art,  thought,  and  culture,  Rome  became  at  last  its 
most  prolific,  most  active,  and  most  varied  centre.  Rome 
was  the  destined  resort  of  artists  in  all  fields  for  some 
five  hundred  years,  from  Giotto  to  Mozart,  and  the  magic 
of  Rome  as  an  artistic  paradise  has  hardly  yet  passed 
away  in  Europe.  Nay,  if  we  consider  the  vast  influence 
over  all  subsequent  building  and  all  subsequent  paint- 
ing of  St.  Peter's  -Church  and  Raffaelle's  designs,  and  of 
church  ceremonial  and  music,  of  the  classical  mania  and 
of  romantic  poetry,  if  we  add  such  minor  influences  as 
those  of  Poussin,  Claude  Lorrain,  Metastasio,  Piranesi, 
Winckelmann,  Niebuhr,  Canova,  and  Thorvaldsen,  we  see 
at  once  how  largely  Rome  has  been  the  clearing-house  for 
the  popularisation  of  art  in  the  last  three  centuries. 

Much  of  it  was  artificial,  theatrical,  and  feeble.  But 
historically  its  development  is  curiously  full  of  interest, 
as  its  influence  over  the  modern  mind  'has  been  almost 
without  a  limit.  Why  do  Catholic  worshippers  from 
Warsaw  to  Cadiz,  in  Santiago,  in  Mexico,  or  Manilla, 


264  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

admire  churches  with  a  rococo  jumble  of  gilded  domes 
and  pirouetting  saints?  Because  the  great  cinque-cento 
artists  built  up  St.  Peter's  as  we  see  it  to-day  ;  and  Jesuit 
demagogues  developed  that  type  into  the  gilt  pot-pourri 
which  attracts  the  ignorant  Catholic  in  every  corner  of  the 
planet.  Florence  was  doubtless  the  birthplace  and  nur- 
sery of  Renascent  art.  But  directly  that  the  Renascence 
was  captured  and  transformed  by  Jesuitism,  Rome  became 
its  official  seat.  And  in  the  evolution  of  human  art,  there 
is  no  record  more  instructive  than  that  still  stamped  on 
the  churches  and  palaces  of  the  Eternal  City. 

The  Rome  of  antiquity,  the  Rome  of  the  Church,  the 
Rome  of  modern  art  are  indeed  three  separate  worlds ; 
and  it  is  their  contrast,  their  juxtaposition,  their  curious 
blending  of  mutual  hate  and  mutual  reaction,  which  forms 
the  most  instructive  page  of  all  history.  Each  of  the 
three  worlds  may  be  seen  in  a  more  intense  form  else- 
where. The  valley  of  the  Rhone  and  the  shores  of  the 
Adriatic  have  still  a  greater  mass  of  imperial  remains  than 
the  city  itself.  The  Apennine  hill  towns,  and  perhaps 
mediaeval  Paris,  have  a  truer  record  of  the  Church.  And 
Florence  is  the  true  cradle  of  modern  art.  But  in  Rome 
all  three  are  combined,  and  their  continual  reaction,  one 
on  the  other,  is  matter  for  inexhaustible  thought. 

Rome,  as  a  city,  is  thus  a  visible  embodiment,  type,  or 
summary  of  human  history,  and,  in  these  days  of  special 
interests  or  tastes,  the  traveller  at  Rome  too  often  forgets 
this  world-wide  range  and  complexity.  To  the  scholar  the 
vast  world  of  Christian  Rome  is  usually  as  utter  a  blank 
as  to  the  Catholic  pilgrim  is  the  story  of  Republic  and 
Empire.  To  the  artist  both  are  an  ancient  tale  of  little 
meaning,  though  the  words  are  strong.  He  who  loves 
'curios'  is  blind  too  often  to  the  sunsets  on  the  Cam- 
pagna.  And  he  who  copies  inscriptions  is  deaf  to  the 


ROME    REVISITED.  265 

music  of  the  people  in  the  Piazza.  Navona,  or  the  evening 
Angelus  rung  out  from  a  hundred  steeples.  All  nations, 
all  professions,  all  creeds  jostle  each  other  in  Rome,  as 
they  did  in  the  age  of  Horace  and  Juvenal  ;  and  they  pass 
by  on  the  other  side  with  mutual  contempt  for  each  other's 
interests  and  pursuits.  But  to  the  historical  mind  all  have 
their  interest,  almost  an  equal  interest,  and  their  combina- 
tion and  contrasts  form  the  most  instructive  lesson  which 
Europe  can  present. 

We  have  had  whole  libraries  about  Rome  pictorial, 
Rome  ecclesiastical,  Rome  artistic,  Rome  antiquarian ; 
about  classical,  mediaeval,  papal,  cinque-cento,  rococo, 
modern  Rome.  There  is  still  room  for  a  book  about 
the  city  of  Rome  as  a  manual  of  history  ;  about  the  in- 
finite variety  of  the  lessons  graven  on  its  stones  and  its 
soil  ;  about  its  contrasts,  its  contradictions,  its  immensity, 
its  continuity ;  the  exquisite  pathos,  the  appalling  waste, 
folly,  cruelty,  recorded  in  that  roll  of  memories  and  sym- 
bols. Such  a  book  would  gather  up  the  thoughts  which, 
as  he  strolls  about  the  Eternal  City,  throng  on  the  mind 
of  every  student  of  human  nature,  and  of  any  historian 
who  is  willing  to  read  as  one  tale  the  history  of  man  from 
the  Stone  Age  down  to  Pope  Leo  xin. 

Of  all  places  on  earth,  Rome  is  the  city  of  contrasts  and 
paradox.  Nowhere  else  can  we  see  memorials  of  such 
pomp  alongside  of  such  squalor.  The  insolence  of  wealth 
jostles  disease,  filth,  and  penury.  Devoutness,  which  holds 
whole  continents  spell-bound,  goes  hand  in  hand  with 
hypocrisy  and  corruption.  What  sublime  piety,  what  ten- 
der charity,  what  ideal  purity,  what  bigotry,  what  brutality, 
what  grossness !  Over  this  convent  garden  pensive  mys- 
ticism has  thrown  a  halo  of  saintliness  :  it  is  overshadowed 
by  a  palace  which  has  one  black  record  of  arrogance. 
There,  some  tomb  breathes  the  very  soul  of  spiritual  art ; 


266  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

beside  it  stands  another  which  is  a  typical  monument  of 
ostentation.  Here  is  a  fragment  worthy  of  Praxiteles, 
buried  under  costly  masses  of  rococo  inanity.  Works  that 
testify  to  stupendous  concentration  of  power  stand  in  a 
chaos  which  testifies  to  nothing  but  savagery  and  ruin. 
The  very  demon  of  destruction  seems  to  have  run  riot 
over  the  spot  that  the  very  genius  of  beauty  has  chosen 
for  his  home. 

The  eternal  lesson  of  Rome  is  the  war  which  each 
phase  of  human  civilisation,  each  type  of  art,  of  manners, 
of  religion,  has  waged  against  its  immediate  predecessor : 
—  the  fury  with  which  it  sought  to  blot  out  its  very  record. 
When  Rome  became  Greek  in  thought,  art,  and  habits,  it 
destroyed  almost  every  vestige  of  the  old  Italian  civilisa- 
tion which  was  the  source  of  its  own  strength ;  and  recent 
excavations  alone  have  unearthed  the  massive  walls,  the 
pottery,  bronze  and  gold  work  of  the  ages  before  Rome 
was,  and  also  of  the  ages  of  Servius,  Camillus,  and  Cin- 
cinnatus.  Imperial  Rome  pillaged  Greece,  Asia,  Africa, 
and  heaped  up  between  the  Quirinal  and  the  Vatican 
priceless  treasures  of  an  art  which  it  only  understood  well 
enough  to  covet  and  to  rob.  When  the  Gospel  triumphed 
over  Imperial  Rome,  it  treated  the  palaces  of  the  Caesars 
as  dens  of  infamy,  and  their  monuments  as  blasphemous 
idols  and  offences  to  God.  When  the  Anti-Christian 
Revival  was  in  all  the  heyday  of  its  immoral  rage  after 
beauty,  it  treated  the  Catholicism  of  the  Middle  Ages  as 
a  barbarous  superstition.  Popes  and  cardinals  destroyed 
more  immortal  works  of  beauty  than  the  worst  scourges  of 
God ;  and  the  most  terrible  Goths  and  Vandals  that  the 
stones  of  Rome  ever  knew  were  sceptical  priests  and 
learned  virtuosi.  Nay,  in  twenty  years  the  reformers  of 
the  Italian  kingdom  have  wrought  greater  havoc  in  the 
aspect  of  Papal  Rome  than,  in  the  four  centuries  since 


ROME    REVISITED.  267 

Julius  IT.,  popes  and  cardinals  ever  wrought  on  Classical 
and  Mediaeval  Rome. 

At  every  turn  we  come  on  some  new  crime  against 
humanity  done  by  fanaticism  or  greed.  Into  Imperial 
Rome  there  was  swept,  as  into  the  museum  of  the  world, 
the  marbles,  the  statues,  the  bronzes,  the  ivories,  the 
paintings  and  carvings,  the  precious  works  of  human 
genius  for  some  six  or  seven  centuries — everything  of 
rarity  and  loveliness  that  could  be  found  between  Cadiz 
and  the  Black  Sea.  There  were  tens  of  thousands  of 
statues  in  Greek  marble,  and  as  many  in  bronze  ;  there 
were  marble  columns,  monoliths,  friezes,  reliefs,  obelisks, 
colossi,  fountains.  Halls,  porticos,  temples,  theatres, 
baths,  were  crowded  with  the  spoils  of  the  world,  rich 
enough  to  furnish  forth  ten  such  cities  as  London,  Paris, 
or  New  York.  It  is  all  gone.  There  are  but  a  few 
fragments  now  that  chance  has  spared.  Twenty  sieges, 
stormings,  pillages,  a  hundred  conflagrations,  the  barbarous 
greed  of  the  invading  hordes,  the  barbarous  fanaticism  of 
the  first  Christians,  the  incessant  wars,  revolutions,  riots, 
and  faction  fights  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  brutal  greedi- 
ness of  popes,  cardinals,  their  nephews  and  their  favourites 
—  worst  of  all,  perhaps,  modern  industrial  iconoclasm  — 
have  swept  away  all  but  a  few  chance  fragments. 

In  the  time  of  Pliny  there  must  have  been  still  extant 
thousands  of  works  of  the  purest  Greek  art  of  the  great 
age.  There  is  now  not  one  surviving  intact  in  the  whole 
world;  and  there  are  but  two  —  the  Hermes  of  Olympia 
and  the  Aphrodite  of  Melos  —  of  which  even  fragments 
remain  in  sufficient  preservation  to  enable  us  to  judge 
them.  Every  other  work  of  the  greatest  age  is  either, 
like  the  Parthenon  relics,  a  mere  ruin,  or  is  known  to  us 
only  by  a  later  imitation.  Of  the  bronzes  not  a  single 
complete  specimen  of  the  great  age  survives.  And  this 


268  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

loss  is  irreparable.  Even  if  such  genius  of  art  were  ever 
to  return  to  this  earth  again,  it  is  certain  that  the  same 
passion  for  physical  beauty,  the  same  habit  of  displaying 
the  form,  can  never  again  be  universal  with  any  civilised 
people.  And  thus  by  the  wanton  destructiveness  of  suc- 
cessive ages,  one  of  the  most  original  types  of  human 
genius  has  become  extinct  on  this  earth,  even  as  the  mas- 
todon or  the  dodo  are  extinct. 

But  masterpieces  of  marble  and  bronze  were  dross  in 
comparison  with  the  masterpieces  of  the  human  soul,  of 
intellect,  purity,  and  love,  that  have  been  mangled  on  this 
same  spot  and  in  sight  of  these  supreme  works  of  genius. 
The  Christian  pilgrim  from  some  Irish  or  American  mon- 
astery, from  Santiago  in  Chile,  from  Armenia  or  Warsaw 
—  the  Catholic  missionary  on  his  way  to  die  in  China, 
or  Polynesia,  or  Uganda  —  prostrates  himself  in  the  dust 
where  Paul  was  beheaded  and  Peter  crucified,  where  Greg- 
ory and  Augustine  prayed,  and  in  the  Colosseum  he  sees 
nothing  but  a  monstrous  black  ruin  ;  but  he  kneels  in 
the  arena  where  the  blood  of  martyrs  was  poured  forth 
like  water,  which  has  witnessed  such  heroic  deaths, 
such  revolting  crimes.  Each  zealot  —  Catholic,  Protestant, 
or  sceptic  —  remembers  only  his  own  martyrs.  Romans 
massacred  Gaul  and  Goth ;  Polytheists  martyred  Chris- 
tians ;  Papal  creatures  tortured  Republicans,  Protestants, 
and  Reformers ;  emperors'  men  slew  popes'  men,  and 
popes'  men  slew  the  emperors'  men  ;  Colonnas  and  Orsinis, 
Borgias  and  Cencis,  Borgheses  and  Barberinis  have  poured 
out  blood  upon  blood,  and  piled  up  crime  on  crime,  till 
every  stone  records  some  inhuman  act,  and  witnesses  also 
to  courage  and  faith  as  memorable  and  quite  as  human. 

The  fanaticism  of  these  same  priests  and  missionaries 
has  its  own  reaction.  As  the  Catholic  pilgrim  to-day  pros- 
trates himself  on  the  spot  where  for  eighteen  centuries 


ROME    REVISITED.  269 

Christian  pilgrims  from  all  parts  of  the  earth  have  pros- 
trated themselves,  the  followers  of  Garibaldi  and  Mazzini 
glare  on  them  with  hatred  and  contempt ;  so  that,  but  for 
soldiers  and  police,  no  priest  in  his  robes  would  be  safe  in 
Rome.  The  death-struggle  between  Papacy  and  Free 
Thought  was  never  more  acute.  Hundreds  of  churches 
are  bare,  deserted,  without  the  semblance  of  a  congre- 
gation. Of  late  years,  one  may  visit  famous  churches, 
known  throughout  the"  Catholic  world,  and  find  one's  self, 
for  hours  together,  absolutely  alone ;  and  sometimes  we 
may  notice  how  they  serve  as  the  resort  of  a  pair  of  lovers, 
who  choose  the  church  as  a  place  to  meet  undisturbed  in 
perfect  solitude.  Vast  monasteries,  which  for  centuries 
have  peopled  Christendom  with  priests  and  teachers,  are 
now  empty,  or  converted  to  secular  uses.  The  Pope  is 
'the  prisoner  of  the  Vatican,'  and  the  Papal  world  has 
withdrawn  from  public  view. 

Nowhere  else  in  the  world  are  we  brought  so  close  face 
to  face  with  the  great  battles  of  religion  and  politics,  and 
with  the  destruction  wrought  by  successive  phases  of 
human  civilisation.  This  destruction  is  more  visible  in 
Rome,  because  fragments  remain  to  witness  to  each  phase  ; 
but  the  destruction  is  not  so  great  as  elsewhere,  where  the 
very  ruins  have  been  destroyed.  At  Paris,  Lyons,  Lon- 
don, York,  Cologne,  and  Milan,  the  Roman  city  has  been 
all  but  obliterated,  and  the  mediaeval  city  also,  and  the 
Renascence  city  after  that ;  so  that,  for  the  most  part,  in 
all  these  ancient  centres  of  successive  civilisations,  we  see 
little  to-day  but  the  monotony  of  modern  convenience,  and 
the  triumphs  of  the  speculative  builder.  But  at  Rome 
enough  remains  to  remind  us  of  the  unbroken  roll  of  some 
three  thousand  years. 

At  Rome  we  see  the  wreckage.  At  Paris  and  London 
it  has  been  covered  fathoms  deep  by  the  rising  tide. 


2/O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

They  are  finding  now  the  tombs,  arms,  ornaments,  and 
structures  of  the  primitive  races  who  dwelt  on  the  Seven 
Hills  before  history  was.  We  may  now  see  the  walls 
which  rose  when  the  history  of  Rome  began,  the  fortress 
of  the  early  kings,  and  their  vast  subterranean  works. 
We  can  still  stand  on  the  spot  where  Horatius  defended 
the  bridge,  and  where  Virginius  slew  his  daughter.  We 
still  see  the  tombs  and  temples,  the  treasure-house  of  the 
Republic.  We  see  the  might  and  glory  of  Rome  when 
she  was  the  mistress  of  the  world  and  the  centre  of  the 
world.  We  see  the  walls  which  long  defied  the  barbarians 
of  the  North ;  we  see  the  tombs  of  the  Christian  martyrs, 
and  trace  the  footsteps  of  the  great  Apostles  ;  we  see  the 
rise,  the  growth,  the  culmination  and  the  death-struggles  of 
the  Catholic  Papacy.  We  see  the  Middle  Ages  piled  up 
on  the  ruins  of  the  ancient  world,  and  the  modern  world 
piled  on  the  ruins  of  the  mediaeval  world.  At  Rome  we 
can  see  in  ruins,  fragments,  or,  it  may  be,  merely  in  cer- 
tain sites,  spots,  and  subterranean  vaults,  that  revolving 
picture  of  history,  which  elsewhere  our  modern  life  has 
blotted  out  from  our  view. 

Take  the  Pantheon  —  in  some  ways  the  central,  the 
most  ancient,  the  most  historic  building  in  the  world. 
For  more  than  1900  years  it  has  been  a  temple  —  first  of 
the  gods  of  the  old  world,  and  since  of  the  Christian  God. 
It  is  the  only  great  extant  building  of  which  that  can 
now  be  said.  It  is  certainly  the  oldest  building  in  continu- 
ous use  on  earth,  for  it  was  a  temple  of  the  pagan  deities 
one  hundred  years  before  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel  at 
Rome ;  dedicated  by  the  minister  and  son-in-law  of  Au- 
gustus in  the  first  splendour  of  the  Empire  ;  converted 
after  six  centuries  into  a  Christian  church  and  burial- 
place,  when  it  was  filled  with  the  bones  of  the  martyrs 
removed  from  the  catacombs.  The  festival  of  All  Saints 


ROME    REVISITED.  2/1 

thereupon  instituted  is  the  one  Christian  festival  which 
modern  scepticism  concurs  in  honouring.  In  the  Revival, 
the  Pantheon  became  the  type  of  all  the  domed  buildings 
of  Europe  —  first  as  the  parent  of  the  dome  of  Florence, 
thence  of  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's,  through  St.  Peter's  of 
our  own  St.  Paul's,  and  so  the  parent  of  all  the  spherical 
domes  of  the  Old  and  the  New  World.  As  such  a  type, 
it  was  the  especial  study  of  the  humanist  artists  of  the 
Revival,  and  so  perhaps  it  was  chosen  for  the  tomb  of 
Raphael.  There,  amidst  a  company  of  painters,  scholars, 
and  artists,  his  sacred  ashes  lie  in  perfect  preservation ; 
and  but  lately  he  has  been  joined  in  death  by  the  first 
king  of  United  Italy,  who  lies  in  a  noble  monument,  round 
which  Catholic  and  Liberals  are  still  glaring  at  each  other  in 
hate.  Plundered  by  Christian  emperors,  plundered  by  popes 
and  cardinals,  the  Pantheon  still  remains,  to  my  eyes,  the 
most  impressive,  original,  and  most  perfect  building  extant. 

Imagine  the  Pantheon  in  its  glory,  before  it  was  stripped 
of  its  gold,  its  bronze,  marbles,  and  statues  by  emperors 
and  popes.  Conceive  that  vast,  solid  dome,  still  the  larg- 
est span  in  the  world — nearly  one  half  more  than  the 
diameter  of  St.  Paul's  —  the  first  great  dome  ever  raised  by 
man,  the  grand  invention  of  Romans,  of  which  the  Greeks 
in  all  their  art  never  dreamed.  The  dome,  with  the  round 
arch  out  of  which  it  sprang,  is  the  most  fertile  conception 
in  the  whole  history  of  building.  The  Pantheon-  became 
the  parent  of  all  subsequent  domes,  and  so  of  that  of  The 
Holy  Wisdom  at  Constantinople,  which  was  the  parent  of 
the  Byzantine  oblate  domes  of  Europe  and  of  Asia. 

We  can  recall  to  the  mind's  eye  its  roof  of  solid  concrete, 
moulded  and  plated  within,  and  covered  with  gilt  bronze 
plates  without ;  with  its  statues,  the  enormous  columns  of 
rare  marbles  and  granite,  its  upper  story  of  porphyry  and 
serpentine,  lit  only  by  one  great  circle  thirty  feet  in  diam- 


272  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

eter,  through  which  the  open  sky  by  day  and  the  stars  by 
night  look  down  on  the  marble  pavement.  To  this  won- 
derful building,  the  one  relic  of  the  ancient  world  in  its 
entirety,  the  builders  of  all  after  ages  turned.  For  five 
centuries  the  Roman  world  turned  to  it ;  till  out  of  it  arose 
a  new  art  in  Constantinople.  Then  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury at  the  Revival  the  humanist  artists  turned  again  to 
this  same  great  work;  it  gave  rise  first  to  the  dome  of 
Florence,  and  then  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  later,  to  the 
dome  of  St.  Peter's  ;  from  St.  Peter's  the  dome  spread  over 
the  world  —  the  Pantheon  and  the  Invalides  at  Paris,  St. 
Paul's  in  London,  the  Capitol  at  Washington,  the  Isaac 
Church  at  St.  Petersburg  are  mere  imitations  of  St.  Peter's. 
And  thus  from  the  Pantheon  has  sprung  the  architecture 
which  from  Chile  to  Chicago,  from  the  British  Islands  to 
the  Turkish  Empire,  from  St.  Petersburg  to  Sicily,  is  seen 
in  a  thousand  varieties,  and  in  ten  thousand  examples. 

But  it  is  not  the  Pantheon,  nor  indeed  any  ancient  tem- 
ple, which  served  as  the  original  type  for  the  Gothic 
churches  of  Europe  down  to  the  ascendency  of  the  Petrine 
type  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Nothing  in  the 
history  of  architecture  is  better  established  than  the  evo- 
lution of  the  Gothic  Cathedral  out  of  the  civil  basilicas 
of  the  ancient  world.  The  whole  course  of  that  evolu- 
tion can  be  traced  step  by  step  at  Rome,  in  Santa  Maria 
Maggiore,  St.  Paul's  without  the  walls,  St.  John  Lateran, 
St.  Clement's,  St.  Agnes',  St.  Lawrence,  and  the  older 
churches  of  the  basilican  type.  Thus  with  the  basilicas, 
extant,  converted,  or  recently  destroyed,  as  the  matrix  of 
the  Gothic  churches  from  the  fifth  to  the  fifteenth  centu- 
ries, and  the  Pantheon  as  the  matrix  of  the  neo-classical 
churches  from  the  fifteenth  to  the  nineteenth  century,  we 
feel  ourselves  at  Rome  in  the  head-waters  from  which  we 
can  trace  the  flow  of  all  modern  architecture. 


ROME    REVISITED.  2/3 

If  the  Pantheon  be  historically  the  central  building  in 
Rome,  it  is  by  no  means  amongst  the  oldest  monuments. 
Nor  are  the  walls  of  Roma  quadrata,  nor  the  first  structures 
of  the  Palatine.  The  Egyptian  obelisks  carry  us  back  to 
a  time  almost  as  remote  from  the  Pantheon  as  the  Pan- 
theon is  from  us.  The  oldest,  perhaps,  date  from  the 
Pharaohs  who  built  the  Pyramids,  and  they  were  made  to 
adorn  the  temple  of  the  Sun  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile, 
thence  were  brought  by  the  first  Caesars  to  adorn  a  circus, 
or  to  give  majesty  to  a  mausoleum,  then  thrown  down  and 
cast  aside  in  Christian  ages  as  monuments  of  heathendom 
and  savage  shows.  Again  they  were  restored  in  the  clas- 
sical revival  after  a  thousand  years  of  neglect,  and  set  up 
to  witness  to  the  pride  of  popes  and  adorn  the  capital  of 
Christendom. 

What  an  epitome  of  human  history  in  those  vast  mono- 
liths, the  largest  of  which  is  thirty-six  feet  higher  than 
Cleopatra's  needle  on  the  Thames,  and  is  more  than  three 
times  its  weight ;  for  a  thousand  years  witnessing  the  pro- 
cessions of  Egyptian  festivals,  then  for  some  centuries  wit- 
nesses of  the  spectacles  and  luxury  of  the  Imperial  city, 
then  for  a  thousand  years  cast  down  into  the  dust,  but  too 
vast  to  be  destroyed,  and  then  set  up  again,  with  the  bless- 
ings of  popes  and  the  ceremonies  of  the  Church,  crowned 
with  the  symbol  of  the  Cross,  to  witness  to  the  grandeur 
of  the  successor  of  St.  Peter.  They  have  looked  down  — 
these  eternal  stones  —  on  Moses  and  Aaron,  on  Pharaohs 
and  Greeks  and  Persians,  on  Alexander  and  Julius,  on 
Peter  and  Paul,  on  Charlemagne  and  Dante,  on  Michael 
Angelo  and  Raphael.  These  stones  were  venerable  ob- 
jects before  history  began;  they  have  been  objects  of 
wonder  to  the  three  great  religions,  three  races,  and 
three  epochs  of  civilisation. 

One  can  forgive  destructive  municipalism  much  for  at 
s 


2/4  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

last  rescuing  from  ignoble  uses  the  burial-places  of  the 
Caesars.  There  are  no  edifices  in  Rome  more  interesting 
to  the  historian  than  those  vast  mausolea  —  the  grandest 
and  most  imposing  tombs  that  exist — the  mausoleum  of 
Augustus,  that  of  Hadrian,  of  Caecilia  Metella,  the  Pyra- 
mid of  Cestius.  That  of  Augustus,  for  a  hundred  years 
the  burial-place  of  the  Caesars  and  their  families,  then  a 
castle  of  the  Colonnas,  the  scene  of  endless  civil  wars, 
afterwards  a  common  theatre  for  open-air  plays,  is  now  at 
last  recovered,  to  be  preserved  as  a  monument  of  antiquity. 
The  yet  vaster  mausoleum  of  Hadrian,  for  another  hundred 
years  the  burial-place  of  the  later  Caesars,  a  huge  tower  of 
240  feet  in  diameter,  and  rising  to  160  feet  in  height; 
once  a  dazzling  mass  of  statuary,  marble,  columns,  bronze 
and  gilding ;  then  a  fortress  that  bore  the  brunt  of  count- 
less sieges,  the  citadel  of  the  popes,  their  prison-house, 
their  refuge,  and  their  treasure-house,  adorned  with  fres- 
coes by  pupils  of  Raphael,  and  famous  in  the  anecdotes  of 
Cellini,  with  cells,  halls,  and  chambers  crowded  with  anec- 
dotes :  at  last  a  barrack  of  the  Pope  and  then  of  the  King 
of  Italy. 

This  too,  as  one  of  the  buildings  of  antiquity  which  has 
been  in  use  continuously  since  the  Empire,  witnesses  at 
once  to  the  grandeur  of  the  Caesars,  to  the  tempest-tossed 
history  of  Rome  in  her  Decline  and  Fall,  to  the  robber 
bands  of  the  Middle  Ages,  to  the  infamies  of  the  Papacy 
of  the  tenth  century  and  of  the  sixteenth  century.  The 
history  of  Rome  from  Theodoric  to  Victor  Emmanuel,  the 
sieges,  the  wars  of  the  popes,  the  whole  story  of  their  tem- 
poral power,  seem  to  group  round  the  Castle  of  the  Angel 
who  stayed  the  Pestilence  at  the  prayers  of  St.  Gregory. 
Within  it  was  the  porphyry  sarcophagus  which  once  held 
the  dust  of  Hadrian.  Strange  is  the  story  of  that  stately 
coffin.  After  a  thousand  years  it  was  carried  off  to  St. 


ROME    REVISITED.  2/5 

Peter's  by  Innocent  n.  for  his  own  body,  and  it  was  burnt 
in  a  conflagration  two  centuries  later.  The  porphyry  lid 
of  it  was  used  in  the  tenth  century  for  the  coffin  of  the 
Emperor  Otho  n.  Seven  centuries  later  his  ashes  were 
ejected  by  a  pope,  and  it  was  converted  into  the  baptismal 
font  of  St.  Peter's,  where  it  now  rests.  What  an  epitome 
of  the  history  of  Rome  !  This  precious  marble  of  the  East, 
made  to  cover  the  dust  of  the  Roman  master  of  the  world 
in  the  grandest  tomb  of  Europe,  desecrated  and  cast  aside 
by  barbarous  invaders,  one  half  of  it  was  used  as  his  coffin 
by  the  Emperor  the  successor  of  Charlemagne,  the  other 
is  adopted  for  his  own  coffin  by  the  Pope,  the  friend  and 
proteg^  si  St.  Bernard.  This  half  is  destroyed  by  fire  ;  the 
other  half  is  still  the  font  in  the  central  Church  of  Chris- 
tendom. The  Empire  of  the  Csesars,  the  Empire  of 
Charlemagne,  the  mediasval  Papacy,  the  modern  Papacy, 
all  are  recorded  in  that  historic  marble.  • 

In  spite  of  disfigurement,  the  recent  'improvements' 
have  rather  accentuated  that  peculiar  quality  of  the  monu- 
ments of  Rome,  that  they  thus  witness  to  the  successive 
revolutions  in  human  destiny.  The  antiquarian  who  exca- 
vates in  the  valley  of  the  Nile,  the  Seine,  or  the  Missis- 
sippi, the  geologist  who  explores  in  the  strata  of  some 
estuary,  comes  upon  layer  after  layer  of  successive  ages, 
the  remains  of  historic  ages,  then  of  pre-historic  ages,  of 
the  bronze  age,  of  the  bone  implements,  of  the  flint  im- 
plements, the  neolithic,  and  the  palaeolithic  age,  until  he 
comes  to  the  glacial  epoch,  and  so  forth.  That  is  the 
character  of  the  Roman  remains.  With  us  Stonehenge 
records  the  Druids  and  nothing  else,  the  White  Tower 
records  the  Norman  Kings,  the  Abbey  the  Plantagenets, 
St.  Paul's  the  Stuarts,  and  no  more.  But  at  Rome  each 
monument  bears  visible  marks  of  four,  five,  or  six  successive 
ages  over  some  two  thousand  years  or  a  yet  longer  span. 


2/6  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

St.  Peter  has  displaced  Trajan  on  his  column,  as  St. 
Paul  has  superseded  Antoninus.  The  Mamertine  prison 
was  first  perhaps  an  Etruscan  waterwork  of  the  early 
kings,  then  the  state  prison  of  the  Republic,  the  scene 
of  the  execution  of  Jugurtha,  and  the  conspirators  of  Cat- 
iline, of  Vercingetorix,  and  many  another  captive  chief,  of 
Sejanus ;  then  it  was  believed  to  be  the  prison  of  St.  Paul 
and  St.  Peter,  from  whence  their  last  epistles  were  written, 
and  since  then  it  has  become  for  the  Catholic  world  a  cen- 
tre of  pilgrimage,  adoration,  and  miracle.  So  the  churches 
round  the  Forum  are  partly  formed  of  Roman  temples  and 
basilicas,  one  of  them  being  the  seat  of  the  Senate.  So 
the  Colosseum  was  built  by  Titus  after  the  capture  of 
Jerusalem,  largely  by  captive  Jews ;  for  three  centuries  it 
continued  the  scene  of  the  most  amazing  and  wonderful 
spectacles  the  world  ever  saw ;  then  it  was  a  fortress  of 
the  feudal  barons,  the  refuge  or  the  terror  of  popes,  then 
the  quarry  from  which  cardinals  and  families  of  popes 
built  their  palaces,  then  a  deserted  ruin,  then  a  factory, 
next  a  sacred  place  of  pilgrimage,  of  preaching,  and  of 
reverential  worship,  and  now  again  secularised  into  a  mere 
antiquarian  museum,  from  which  Nature  and  God  have 
been  driven  as  with  a  pitchfork.  So,  too,  out  of  one  vast 
hall  in  the  Baths  of  Diocletian,  Michael  Angelo  con- 
structed for  a  pope  a  stately  modern  church.  The  col- 
umns, the  marble  floors,  the  sarcophagi,  the  fonts,  and  the 
pulpits  in  the  older  churches  have  each  a  long  and  varied 
history.  A  column  of  Grecian  marble  has  been  oddly 
inscribed,  '  From  the  bed-chamber  of  the  Caesars.'  A 
sculptured  coffin  first  held  a  Roman  senator,  was  next 
converted  to  the  use  of  a  martyred  saint,  was  then  cast 
aside  as  a  worthless  bit  of  stone  on  a  heap  of  rubbish,  and 
at  length  appropriated  by  an  aesthetic  churchman  for  his 
own  pompous  monument. 


ROME    REVISITED.  2"J"J 

There  is  one  feature  of  Rome  which  even  the  rage  of 
'  improvement '  has  spared  as  yet  —  the  feature  which  of 
all  others  is  the  most  suggestive  to  the  historical  mind  — 
the  ancient  city  walls  :  the  whole  series  of  walls,  with 
their  towers,  gates,  ramparts,  and  barbicans,  with  the 
twelve  miles  of  circuit,  the  fragments  of  the  early  kings, 
the  walls  of  Romulus  and  of  Servius,  the  walls  of  Aurelian 
and  of  Belisarius  and  Theodoric,  the  walls  of  Pope  Leo,  of 
Pope  Sixtus,  of  Urban,  of  Pio  Nono.  What  a  vast  proces- 
sion of  events  has  passed  in  the  sixteen  centuries  since 
Aurelian  made  the  circuit  that  we  see !  As  we  stand  on 
those  ramparts  in  the  Pincian  or  in  the  Medici  garden,  or 
beside  the  Lateran  Terrace,  or  near  the  grave  of  Shelley, 
what  visions  we  may  still  recall — what  victorious  armies 
from  east  and  west,  north  and  south,  coming  home  in 
triumph  under  Diocletian  and  Constantine,  Julian  and 
Theodosius,  with  the  eagles  glancing  in  the  sun,  and  the 
legionaries  tramping  on  in  serried  ranks  ;  what  hordes  of 
northern  and  southern  invaders,  Vandals,  Goths,  Lom- 
bards, Franks,  Normans,  and  Saracens,  the  ever  victorious 
armies  of  Charles  the  Great,  of  the  Othos,  of  the  Norman 
Guiscard  ;  what  battles  ;  what  sackings  and  conflagrations ; 
or  again,  what  long  processions  of  pilgrims  from  all  parts 
of  the  earth ;  what  bands  of  monks  led  by  Francis,  Domi- 
nic, Loyola,  and  Xavier ;  what  companies  of  men-at-arms 
led  by  Colonnas,  Orsinis,  Frangipanis,  Contis,  and  Cre- 
scentii ;  and  then  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies what  clash  of  arms,  what  pompous  ceremonies,  what 
historic  meetings,  down  to  the  time  of  Napoleon  and  Gari- 
baldi, and  Pio  Nono  and  Victor  Emmanuel,  and  the  latest 
breach  of  all,  through  which  the  Italian  kingdom  entered 
and  displaced  the  Pope.  These  walls  and  gates,  them- 
selves of  all  ages,  bear  stamped  on  them  the  history  of 
Europe  during  sixteen  centuries.  Few  edifices  of  man's 


278  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

hand  on  this  earth  have  a  record  so  great,  and  of  such  cen- 
tral interest. 

Of  the  Catholic  memorials  of  Rome,  though  the  Church 
has  almost  disappeared  from  sight,  nothing  is  destroyed 
and  little  is  changed.  To  the  Protestant  tourist,  with  his 
Murray  and  his  Baedeker,  now  that  the  public  papal  cere- 
monies have  practically  ceased,  this  Catholic  world  is  for 
the  most  part  a  blank.  He  passes  from  the  Caesars  to 
Raphael  and  Michael  Angelo,  Bernini  and  Guido,  from  the 
Forum  to  St.  Peter's  according  to  his  taste,  without  a 
thought  of  the  vast  world  of  history,  of  legend,  of  poetry, 
of  art,  of  religion,  that  fills  up  the  twelve  centuries  be- 
tween the  days  of  Constantine  and  the  days  of  Leo  x. 
The  British  tourist  is  but  one  out  of  many.  To  the  tens 
of  thousands  of  Catholic  pilgrims  who  visit  Rome  from  all 
parts  of  the  world,  this  city  of  St.  Peter  is  all  in  all ;  ruins 
and  pictures  to  them  are  worldly  trifles.  To  them  Chris- 
tian Rome  is  everything,  and  heathen  Rome  and  modern 
Rome  are  less  than  nothing.  And  to  the  impartial  mind 
of  history,  this  Christian  Rome  is  a  very  solid  third  part 
—  nay,  perhaps,  a  real  half  of  Rome — historic  Rome  in 
its  entirety. 

But  it  is  a  thorny  topic  to  the  mere  historian,  is  this 
Christian  Rome ;  for  every  corner  of  its  story  is  encrusted 
with  vague  legend,  unsupported  guesses,  usually  passing 
into  palpable  imposture.  Miracle,  tradition,  superstition, 
and  fraud  have  got  inextricably  woven  into  the  texture  of 
each  record.  As  the  tourist  mocks  at  the  footprints  of  the 
Apostles  in  the  Mamertine  rock,  at  the  miraculous  Bam- 
bino of  Ara  Coeli ;  so  the  learned  antiquary  shakes  his 
head  at  the  sacred  image  of  St.  Peter,  and  at  the  tomb  and 
cell  of  St.  Cecilia.  But  the  scepticism  of  tourist  and 
antiquarian  are  somewhat  overdone.  There  is  a  legendary, 
perhaps  a  fraudulent,  element  in  many  of  the  lives  and 


ROME    REVISITED.  279 

martyrdoms,  nay,  in  most  of  them.  Strict  historical  criti- 
cism can  accept  no  one  in  its  entirety.  But  there  is  a 
vast  substructure  of  fact,  most  difficult  to  disentangle,  and 
impossible  now  to  prove.  For  my  part,  I  would  as  soon 
believe  that  nothing  of  the  Golden  House  of  Nero  still 
exists  under  the  Baths  of  Titus,  that  no  fragment  of  Roma 
quadrata  remains  embedded  in  the  palaces  of  the  Caesars, 
as  I  would  believe  that  the  legends  of  St.  Clement  and  St. 
Lawrence,  of  Cecilia  and  Agnes,  of  Martina  and  Bibiana, 
were  mere  poetic  inventions  with  no  basis  of  fact.  It  is 
for  the  historical  mind  a  hopeless  task  to  analyse  this 
element  of  fact  ;  and  where  superstition  has  piled  up 
fables,  and  scepticism  retorts  with  wholesale  ridicule,  a 
lifetime  would  hardly  suffice  to  separate  truth  and  fiction. 

Let  us,  then,  be  content  to  grope  in  the  labyrinthine 
passages  and  silent  vaults  of  the  catacombs,  to  view  the 
mouldering  bones  in  their  narrow  cribs,  the  lamps,  and 
circlets,  and  fragments  of  pottery  and  metal,  the  rude  and 
smoky  frescoes,  the  inscriptions,  the  epitaphs,  the  emblems 
of  the  faith  ;  let  us  descend  into  the  lower  churches  of 
St.  Clement  and  St.  Agnes  and  St.  Lawrence,  St.  Cosmas, 
and  St.  Martina ;  let  us  visit  the  baptistry  and  cloisters  of 
the  Lateran,  even  the  Scala  Santa  and  the  crypt  of  St. 
Peter's  ;  let  us  ponder  over  S.  Gregorio  and  its  remains  of 
the  great  Gregory,  S.  Sabina,  with  its  record  of  Dominic 
and  Aquinas ;  let  us  meditate  in  the  convent  gardens  of 
the  Esquiline  and  the  Aventine,  and  feel  that  we  are  truly 
in  touch  with  scenes  historically  consecrated  by  some  of 
the  greatest  souls  who  have  ever  dignified  humanity,  with 
spots  hallowed  as  some  of  the  turning  points  in  human 
civilisation,  and  certainly  consecrated  by  the  tears  and 
prayers  of  believers  during  eighteen  centuries.  We  neither 
surrender  our  critical  judgment  nor  give  way  to  a  ribald 
scepticism.  What  parts  of  this  mighty  and  pathetic 


28O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

pageantry  of  Christian  legend  are  real,  and  what  parts  are 
pious  fiction  or  unholy  fraud,  we  cannot  tell.  Let  us  for- 
bear to  probe  further  where  the  task  is  vain.  But  this  we 
know :  that  in  that  enormous  mass  of  legend,  relic,  cere- 
monial, tradition  and  art,  there  is  a  basis  of  profound 
reality,  and  a  world  of  imagery,  emotion,  sacrifice,  such  as 
man's  brain  and  heart  have  never  surpassed. 

It  is  a  melancholy  reflection  how  often  our  critical  and 
sceptical  habits  make  us  blind  to  the  true  historic  signifi- 
cance of  such  a  monument  as  St.  Peter's.  The  tourist  and 
the  student  of  art  decry  its  rococo  saints  and  extravagant 
pomposity,  the  waste  of  power,  the  manifest  hollowness  of 
its  peculiar  relics.  Put  aside  antiquarian  and  aesthetic 
criticism,  and  still  a  marvellous  record  remains.  Grant 
that  the  Cathedra  Petri,  the  miraculous  bronze  image  and 
the  bones  of  the  Apostle,  the  column  at  which  Christ  was 
scourged,  are  all  pious  fictions,  there  remains  still  in  the 
very  site,  in  the  tombs  of  the  early  Leos,  of  Matilda,  the 
great  countess,  in  the  antique  Madonnas,  in  the  font,  in 
the  crypt  and  subterranean  vaults,  in  the  sacristy  and  the 
cemetery  of  Constantine,  in  the  tomb  of  Junius  Bassus, 
and  in  the  Navicella  of  Giotto,  above  all,  in  the  long 
annals  of  that  venerated  spot  from  the  circus  of  Nero 
down  to  its  final  consecration  by  Urban  vin.,  enough  to 
fill  the  thirteen  centuries  between  Constantine  and  the 
Borgheses. 

To  visit  Rome  —  which  even  in  the  last  generation  had 
on  most  minds  a  sobering  effect,  as  a  visit  to  a  cemetery 
must  have,  however  beautiful  be  the  spot  where  the  de- 
parted sleep  —  has  grown  to  be  of  mournful  interest  to 
those  who  remember  it  of  old.  There  is  to  them  a  new 
meaning  in  the  peasant's  song,  *  Roma,  Roma,  non  e  piu 
com'  era  prima ! '  We  can  see  no  longer  the  Salvator 
Rosa  ruins  and  rocks,  the  Piranesi  colonnades  and  arches, 


ROME    REVISITED.  28 1 

the  quaint  old  Papal  pageantry,  and  the  pensive  landscape 
from  garden  and  terrace.  Bits  of  it  remain  here  and  there 
amidst  acres  of  building  speculations  and  American  cara- 
vanserais. But  for  the  mere  student  of  antiquity  there  is 
ample  compensation.  And  it  is  perhaps  the  truth  that  the' 
deepest  interest  of  Rome  still  is  not  in  its  art,  in  its  Vati- 
can galleries,  Sistine  frescoes,  or  dome  of  St.  Peter's,  not 
in  its  churches,  cloisters,  relics,  and  tombs,  but  in  its 
record  of  the  ancient  world.  Rome  never  was  a  centre  of 
art  even  in  the  days  of  Raphael,  she  never  was  a  centre  of 
Christianity  even  in  the  twelfth  and  the  thirteenth  century, 
as  she  was  a  centre  of  civilisation  in  the  ages  of  Julius, 
Augustus,  Vespasian,  and  Trajan. 

We  may  still  stand  on  the  tower  of  the  Capitol  and 
survey  that  glorious  panorama  bounded  by  Tuscan,  Sabine, 
and  Alban  hills,  and  dream  what  that  scene  was  some 
seventeen  or  eighteen  hundred  years  ago.  The  Forum 
below  was  one  radiant  avenue  of  temples,  triumphal  arches, 
triumphal  columns,  colossal  statues,  monuments,  and  votive 
shrines  —  the  senate-house,  the  rostra,  the  sacred  way  on 
one  side  —  the  circular  temple  of  Vesta,  the  temple  of 
Castor,  and  the  basilica  of  Julius  on  the  other;  above,  on 
the  right,  the  temple  of  Jove,  on  the  left  that  of  Juno,  and 
the  towering  palaces  of  the  Palatine  and  the  Circus  Maxi- 
mus  beyond  the  valley.  Far  as  the  eye  can  reach  would 
be  vast  theatres,  enormous  baths,  colossal  sepulchres, 
obelisks,  columns,  fountains,  equestrian  statues  in  marble 
or  in  bronze.  The  walls  of  these  sumptuous  edifices  are 
all  of  dazzling  brilliance  in  Oriental  marbles,  bright  with 
mosaic  and  with  frescoes,  and  their  roofs  are  covered  with 
plates  of  hammered  gold.  In  the  far  distance,  across  ter- 
races and  gardens  shady  with  the  dark  foliage  of  cypress 
and  stone  pine,  might  be  seen  the  aqueducts  which  bring 
from  the  mountains  whole  rivers  into  the  city,  to  fill  its 


282  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

thousand  baths  and  its  hundred  fountains.  And  between 
the  aqueducts  and  the  porticoes,  far  as  the  eye  can  reach 
to  the  hills  beyond,  villas  gleam  in  the  sun  with  their  ter- 
races, gardens,  statues,  and  shrines,  each  a  little  city  in 
'itself. 

This  earth  has  never  seen  before  or  since  so  prodigious 
an  accumulation  of  all  that  is  beautiful  and  rare.  The 
quarries  of  the  world  had  been  emptied  to  find  precious 
marbles.  Forests  of  exquisite  columns  met  the  gaze, 
porphyry,  purple  and  green,  polished  granite,  streaked 
marbles,  in  the  hues  of  a  tropical  bird,  yellow,  orange, 
rosy,  and  carnation,  ten  thousand  statues,  groups  and 
colossi  of  dazzling  Parian  or  of  golden  bronze,  the  work 
of  Greek  genius,  of  myriads  of  slaves,  of  unlimited  wealth 
and  absolute  command.  Power  so  colossal,  centralisation 
so  ruthless,  luxury  so  frantic,  the  world  had  never  seen, 
and  we  trust  can  never  see  again. 

Strangely  enough  this  portentous  accumulation  of  riches 
and  splendour  lay  open  to  all  comers.  The  one  thing  that 
could  not  be  seen  (till  the  Empire  was  nearing  its  close) 
was  a  wall,  a  fortress,  a  defence  of  any  kind.  Rome  of 
the  Cassars  was  as  free  from  any  military  look  as  London 
to-day.  It  had  neither  wall  nor  citadel  nor  forts.  It  was 
guarded  only  by  a  few  thousand  soldiers  and  a  few  thou- 
sand police.  For  four  centuries  or  so  it  flourished  in  all  its 
glory.  There  followed  some  ten  centuries  of  ruin,  waste, 
desolation,  and  chaos,  until  its  restoration  began — a  resto- 
ration sometimes  that  was  a  new  and  worse  ruin.  The 
broken  fragments  only  can  be  seen  to-day.  Here  and 
there  a  few  mutilated  columns,  cornices,  staircases,  and 
pavements,  the  foundations  of  vast  temples,  theatres, 
and  porticoes,  the  skeleton  of  a  few  buildings  too  vast  to  be 
destroyed,  a  few  half-ruined  arches,  a  number  of  broken 
statues  in  marble,  and  one  complete  in  brorize,  rescued 


ROME    REVISITED.  283 

because  it  was  wrongly  supposed  to  be  a  Christian  sov- 
ereign. All  else  is  dust  and  endless  tantalising  dreams. 
But  that  dust  draws  men  to  it  as  no  other  dust  ever  can. 
And  he  who  begins  to  dream  longs  to  dream  again  and 
again. 


CHAPTER  X. 

IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS. 

ON  a  recent  visit  to  Athens,  I  was  introduced  to  a  beau- 
tiful and  patriotic  Athenian  lady,  the  wife  of  an  official  of 
rank,  who  begged  me  to  write  about  Athens  on  my  return 
home  (this,  I  may  say,  is  an  ordinary  form  of  politeness  in 
that  capital).  When  I  promised  rather  rashly  that  I  would 
try  to  do  something,  she  took  my  breath  away  by  asking 
if  I  meant  to  write  about  ancient  or  modern  Athens  ? 
This  question  did  seem  to  me  one  of  startling  naiveti ; 
and  I  helplessly  replied  that,  whatever  I  said,  should  be 
about  Athens  —  one  and  indivisible.  My  daring  paradox 
was  rewarded  with  a  gracious  smile. 

My  answer  was,  however,  not  at  all  so  extravagant  as  at 
first  sight  might  appear.  It  is  true  that  of  all  cities  of  the 
world  of  any  pretensions,  Athens  is  the  one  of  which  the 
ancient  history  (and  the  ancient  history  of  a  very  short 
period)  is  all  absorbing.  We  all  dream  of  having  seen 
Athens,  or  dream  of  one  day  seeing  Athens,  for  the  sake 
of  the  overpowering  memories  of  some  two  or  three  cen- 
turies at  most.  When  we  are  at  Athens,  our  eyes  and  our 
thoughts  are  filled  with  the  sublime  and  up-soaring  rem- 
nants of  that  brief  epoch  in  the  great  age  of  the  Republic. 
From  that  epoch  until  our  own  lifetime,  the  history  of 
Athens,  except  for  a  few  trivial  scuffles  and  isolated  notices, 
has  been  a  mere  blank,  almost  as  much  as  if  it  had  been 
another  Pompeii  buried  under  the  dust  of  a  volcano  and 
recently  disinterred. 

284 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS.  285 

But,  within  the  last  thirty  or  forty  years,  we  may  say, 
Athens  has  risen  up  out  of  its  tomb  : — not  like  Pompeii, 
dead,  silent,  deaf,  and  voiceless,  but  eagerly  revivifying  the 
city  of  Pericles  after  some  2300  years  ;  reproducing  the 
language,  the  political  habits,  the  names,  the  intellectual 
peculiarities,  even  the  architecture  and  the  tastes  of  the 
ancient  city  —  rising  up,  like  Lazarus,  after  all  these  cen- 
turies, talking  and  living,  as  if  the  death  of  twenty-three 
centuries  had  been  a  trance.  This  fact,  however  super- 
ficial and  artificial  it  may  be  in  many  ways,  however  little 
the  modern  city  can  compare  with  the  art  and  thought  of 
the  ancient  city,  is  a  striking  fact  psychological,  social,  and 
historical.  And  hence,  there  is  a  strong  tendency  to  con- 
sider Athens  as  it  is,  even  whilst  studying  what  Athens 
was.  At  Rome,  or  at  Alexandria,  there  is  almost  nothing 
but  the  stones  and  the  sites,  to  remind  one  of  the  ancient 
people.  At  Athens,  the  first  impression  is  a  sort  of  serio- 
comic fancy  revival  of  the  old  city.  We  stand  in  the 
Forum  or  the  Piazza  Navona  at  Rome  without  imagining 
that  the  cab-drivers  or  the  fruit-sellers  have  anything  in 
common  with  Coriolanus  or  Camillus.  They  do  not  speak 
the  language,  or  use  the  names,  or  imitate  the  forms  of  the 
Republic.  But  as  one  walks  along  the  0809  'E/o/xoO  in  full 
view  of  the  Acropolis,  or  listens  to  Tricoupi  addressing  the 
S>7/zo<?  'A6rjvalo<j  in  the  open  air  in  a  language  which  Thucy- 
dides  could  understand,  and  which  he  would  have  rejoiced 
to  cast  into  stately  epigrams,  as  we  pass  under  the  Doric 
colonnades,  in  dazzling  Pentelic  marble,  of  the  Academy, 
and  the  Museum  —  it  is  difficult  to  be  quite  indifferent  to 
the  revival  —  as  some  say,  the  scenic  revival  —  but,  in  any 
case,  a  most  suggestive  historical  renascence.  As  Byron 
felt,  as  competent  historians  feel,  it  is  impossible  to  be 
wholly  blind  to  the  living  Athens  of  to-day. 

My  own  two  visits  to  Greece  were  too  short  to  allow  any- 


286  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

thing  that  can  be  called  research,  and  these  pages  will  aim 
at  nothing  but  the  recalling  a  few  first  impressions.  When 
one  arrives  in  Greece,  the  first  thing  that  strikes  us  is  that 
we  have  left  Europe  behind.  It  is  true  that  Greece  is  not 
in  Asia  or  in  Africa,  and  hardly  in  the  East  ;  but  in  spite 
of  the  maps,  it  is  only  conventionally  in  Europe.  Greece 
is  something  between  Europe  and  the  East,  with  a  certain 
dash  of  the  South.  The  climate,  the  continuous  blaze  of 
the  sun,  the  long  months  of  complete  drought,  the  dusty 
plains  and  dry  water-courses,  the  aloes,  the  date  palms,  the 
cotton,  the  indigo,  the  current-grape,  the  jackal,  the  cha- 
maeleon,  and  the  small  crocodile  —  even  the  camel  which  has 
been  seen  in  use  —  are  Eastenvand  Southern  rather  than 
European.  When  we  land  in  Greece,  we  find  ourselves  in 
the  middle  of  the  week  before  last,  that  is  to  say,  they  still 
use  the  Calendar  of  the  Eastern  Church,  and  are  twelve 
days  behind  us  in  Europe.  And  in  A.D.  1900  this  will  have 
become  thirteen  days,  for  in  the  West  we  shall  omit  that 
leap-year  and  gain  another  day.  In  Greece  they  talk  of 
the  post  coming  in  from  Europe,  which  it  only  does  when 
a  ship  arrives,  and  they  speak  of  European  things,  in  the 
sense  of  foreign.  In  spite  of  the  conventional  statements 
of  the  geographers,  Greece  is  not  in  Europe ;  but  a  half- 
way house  between  Europe  and  Asia. 

Another  important  fact,  which  the  geographers  ignore, 
is  this  —  that  Greece  is  an  island  for  any  practical  purpose 
—  or  rather  an  interminable  string  of  islands  scattered 
along  the  Eastern  Mediterranean  over  a  space  of  sea  that 
may  measure  some  500  miles,  both  north  and  south,  east 
and  west.  The  maps  may  show  Greece  as  a  prolongation 
of  the  Balkan  Peninsula ;  but  it  would  not  be  practicable 
for  an  ordinary  traveller  to  reach  Greece  except  by  sea. 
Athens,  though  it  is  a  capital  city  of  Europe,  cannot  be 
reached  by  the  continental  railways.  The  train  will  carry 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS.  28/ 

us  direct  from  Calais  to  the  furthest  extremities  of  the 
Spanish,  Italian,  Austrian,  Russian,  and  even  Turkish 
dominions  in  Europe.  But  railways  do  not  reach  in  the 
Balkan  Peninsula  south  of  Salonica,  in  Turkey.  The 
Romans  and  the  Turks  had  roads  into  Greece  proper ;  but 
it  is  now  unsafe,  very  fatiguing,  and  costly,  to  travel  by 
land  from  Salonica  to  Athens,  and  nobody  does  so.  Hence, 
practically,  socially,  politically,  and  economically  speaking, 
Greece  is  an  island,  a  vast  cluster  of  islands  placed  in  the 
ALgean  Sea,  very  far  East  and  very  far  South.  Athens 
lies  east  of  Poland  and  of  Hungary.  The  whole  of  Greece 
lies  south  of  Naples  and  Taranto  ;  and  Crete  lies  south  of 
the  Algerian  coast  and  of  any  point  of  Europe. 

We  must  go  to  Greece  by  sea :  and  the  sea  voyage  is 
most  instructive.  There  is  a  long,  lonely,  restless  stretch 
of  sea,  some  400  miles  broad  between  the  coast  of  Sicily 
and  sight  of  the  mountains  of  Attica.  When  the  vast  pin- 
nacle of  Aetna,  with  its  trailing  pennon  of  smoke,  a  pin- 
nacle which  hour  after  hour  seems  to  rise  in  the  sky,  at 
last  fades  out  of  sight  in  the  west,  a  long  reach  of  unbroken 
sea  has  to  be  ploughed.  Long  before  we  sight  the  moun- 
tains of  Taygetus  or  the  headlands  of  Tsenarum  or  Malea, 
between  which  lies  the  vale  of  '  Hollow  Lacedaemon,'  one 
has  come  to  realise  that  we  have  left  Europe  far  behind 
and  are  entering  on  the  land  of  the  rising  sun.  The  old 
saw  ran  —  '  When  you  have  passed  Cape  Malea,  make  your 
will  and  say  farewell  to  your  kindred.'  That  is  no  longer 
necessary  or  even  prudent.  But  by  the  time  that  we  have 
rounded  Cape  Malea  and  are  steering  north-east  instead  of 
south-east,  it  breaks  upon  us  that  we  have  left  Europe  some 
distance  behind  us. 

Whatever  geographers  may  pretend,  there  is  not  any 
such  country  as  Greece — and  there  never  was.  There 
is  no  definitely  marked  portion  of  Europe  inhabited  by  a 


288  THE    CITY    IN   HISTORY. 

people  politically  and  socially  one,  with  national  traditions 
and  habits.  There  is  not  now,  and  there  never  has  been  in 
ancient  or  in  modern  times.  If  we  take  a  list  of  the  illus- 
trious Greeks  of  antiquity,  we  shall  find  that  far  the  larger 
part  of  them  belonged  not  to  continental  Greece  proper, 
but  to  Greek  communities  spread  out  over  the  world  from 
the  coast  of  Spain  to  the  banks  of  the  Euphrates,  from 
the  Euxine  to  the  coast  of  Africa.  There  is  now  a  Greek 
language,  a  Greek  church,  a  Greek  nationality,  possibly  to 
some  degree,  but  very  doubtfully,  a  Greek  race,  spread  over 
many  countries,  over  a  thousand  islands,  mingled  with  other 
races,  languages,  and  countries  ;  subdivided,  dispersed,  and 
scattered  over  more  than  a  thousand  miles,  though  the 
population  of  the  entire  Greek  kingdom  is  not  half  that 
of  London.  All  good  Greeks  would  be  scandalised  if  Crete 
was  not  included  in  Greece  —  Crete  where  they  say  true 
Hellenes  survive.  And  if  Crete,  why  not  Rhodes,  why  not 
Cyprus,  why  not  Smyrna,  Chios,  Lesbos,  and  the  other 
islands  of  the  Archipelago  ?  Till  Athens  lately  became 
populous,  there  were  more  Greeks  in  Constantinople  than 
in  Athens,  and  it  is  always  said  of  a  purer  Hellenic  descent. 
And  no  other  Greek  town  except  Athens  and  Piraeus  con- 
tains as  many  Greeks  as  there  are  in  Smyrna,  or  Alex- 
andria, perhaps  in  Trieste,  or  London.  Where  does  Greece 
begin  and  end  ?  All  genuine  Greeks  deny  with  indignation 
that  Greece  is  limited  by  the  present  frontiers  of  the  actual 
kingdom.  What  are  its  local  limits  ?  Every  true  Hellene, 
and  every  Philhellene  states  them  in  a  different  way.  A 
Greek  orator  addressing  the  people  of  Athens  talks  not  of 
their  country,  but  of  Hellenismus  or  Panhellenism,  that 
is,  the  common  aspirations  of  the  so-called  Greek  race. 
Greece  may  mean  a  nation  ;  it  cannot  mean  a  country. 

Until  we  see  Greece  we  hardly  realise  that   Greece  is 
practically    all    mountains,    tremendous,   bare,    precipitous 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS.  289 

mountains,  with  hardly  any  real  plains  of  any  size  except 
at  extreme  points.  The  islands  are  so  numerous  and  so 
close  to  the  mainland  that  they  practically  form  part  of 
it.  They  are  mere  tops  of  mountains  rising  out  of  the 
sea.  And  it  is  much  easier  to  pass  from  one  island  to 
another,  than  from  one  point  of  the  mainland  to  another 
a  few  miles  off.  In  sailing  across  the  yEgean  Sea,  from 
the  time  we  sight  Cape  Taenarum  (Matapaii)  until  we  reach 
the  Bosphorus,  some  500  miles,  we  never  lose  sight  of 
mountains  towering  out  of  the  sea.  From  Taenarum  we 
can  see  the  mountains  of  Crete  100  miles  off;  and  in 
passing  up  the  Archipelago,  we  see  on  one  side  the  islands 
and  mainland  of  Asia  Minor  on  the  East,  and  the  islands 
and  mainland  of  European  Greece  on  the  West.  Hence, 
the  whole  of  Greece,  mainland  and  islands  together,  looks 
not  like  a  definite  country  such  as  Italy,  Spain,  France,  or 
England,  but  a  long  chain  of  Alps  or  Andes,  half  sub- 
merged in  the  Eastern  Mediterranean,  and  thrusting  a 
thousand  bare  and  jagged  peaks  to  form  islands  in  the  sea. 
The  mountains  are  themselves  lofty ;  and  since  they 
are  usually  seen  as  if  they  rose  straight  up  out  of  the  sea, 
they  look  stupendous,  even  to  eyes  familiar  with  the  Alps, 
the  Pyrenees,  and  the  Apennines.  The  principal  moun- 
tains in  Greece  are  more  than  twice  the  height  of  Snow- 
don.  Olympus,  the  loftiest  of  all,  is  more  than  twice  the 
height  of  Ben  Nevis  with  Arthur's  Seat  at  Edinburgh  on 
the  top  of  that.  The  mountains  which  gird  Athens  round 
like  a  crown  (Mr.  Symonds  thinks  they  form  what  the  poet 
calls  '  the  crown  of  purple ')  are  loftier  than  Snowdon  and 
Ben  Nevis,  and  yet  they  are  all  within  a  clay's  walk  of  the 
city.  Thus  from  every  point  of  view,  Greece  is  not  so 
much  a  country  as  a  vast  mountain  chain  half  submerged 
in  the  sea.  And  owing  to  the  multiplicity  and  height  of 
the  mountains,  the  small  area  in  which  they  are  concen- 


2QO  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

trated,  the  singular  transparency  of  the  air,  and  the  degree 
to  which  the  land  is  indented  and  intersected  by  sea, 
Greece  appears  to  be  strangely  small,  —  even  smaller  than 
it  really  is.  It  is  hardly  anywhere  more  than  two  hun- 
dred miles  deep,  or  one  hundred  miles  broad.  So  that 
from  almost  any  elevated  point,  the  greater  part  of  Greece 
can  be  seen  at  once.  Attica,  the  Peloponnesus,  the  East- 
ern islands,  the  mountains  of  Boeotia,  Argolis,  Arcadia 
and  Euboea,  are  all  to  be  seen  together.  Attica  is  hardly 
bigger  than  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  infinitely  less  open  to 
cultivation  and  transit.  And  ancient  Athens  would  easily 
stand  in  the  area  of  Hyde  Park  and  Kensington  Gardens. 
When  we  see  it,  we  realise  how  small  Greece  is,  in  one 
sense ;  and  yet  how  widely  spread  out  over  the  Eastern 
Mediterranean.  Continental  Greece  is  merely  one  vast 
mountain  mass,  into  whose  lateral  valleys  and  gorges  the 
sea  has  forced  a  channel.  And  yet,  in  another  sense, 
Greece  with  its  interminable  chain  of  rocky  islets,  from 
Corcyra  to  Crete,  from  Crete  to  the  Propontis,  seems  to 
lead  on  in  a  continuous  land  for  a  thousand  miles.  The 
mainland  is  severed  by  nature  into  small  segments,  each 
hardly  able  by  itself  to  feed  a  thousand  families.  All 
Attica  can  hardly  grow  as  much  food  as  a  single  great 
estate  in  England,  France,  or  Russia.  Eleusis,  which 
Athens  ultimately  subdued  and  incorporated,  is  not  so  far 
from  Athens  as  is  Shepherd's  Bush  from  Woolwich ;  and 
these  famous  towns  are  separated  from  each  other  by  a 
steep  and  difficult  mountain  pass,  which  a  regiment  could 
hold  against  an  army  corps.  Megara,  which  was  a  thorn 
in  the  side  of  Athens  at  the  time  of  her  imperial  glory, 
was  not  much  further  from  her  than  is  Gravesend  from 
London.  Corinth,  the  deadly  enemy  of  Athens,  could  be 
seen  from  the  Acropolis.  ^Egina,  which  Themistocles  so 
earnestly  advised  the  Athenians  to  incorporate,  looks  as 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS.  2QI 

near  to  Athens  as  Harrow  looks  to  Netting  Hill ;  and  a 
single  oarsman  might  row  himself  across  the  gulf  in  any 
open  boat. 

The  mighty  statue  in  bronze  of  Athene  Promachos,  the 
famous  work  of  Pheidias,  which,  with  its  pedestal,  towered 
*  some  sixty  feet  on  the  summit  of  the  Acropolis,  could  be 
seen  from  the  coast  of  Argolis  or  from  any  of  the  heights 
of  Corinth,  Megara,  ^Egina,  or  Boeotia.  Thence  they  could 
behold  Athene  keeping  watch  night  and  day  over  her  be- 
loved city.  One  used  to  doubt  if  this  famous  image  could 
escape  the  charge  of  obtrusive  monstrosity  which  is  the 
note  of  colossal  statues.  But  when  we  stand  on  the  spot, 
and  remember  how  this  resplendent  figure  of  the  Patron 
Goddess  ever  faced  the  enemies  of  Athens,  as  each  sun- 
rise and  sunset  tipped  with  golden  fire  the  point  of  her 
spear  and  the  crest  of  her  helm,  we  may  conceive  how 
this  Palladium  sank  into  the  popular  imagination.  And 
we  see  fresh  meaning  in  the  tale  how,  eight  hundred  years 
after  the  date  of  its  erection,  Alaric  and  his  Goths  had 
been  scared  from  their  raid  on  the  Acropolis  by  the  vision 
of  the  Goddess  keeping  ward  over  her  city  in  arms. 

As  the  traveller  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  sails  up 
the  Gulf  of  y^Egina,  and  his  straining  eyes  at  last  behold 
Attica  and  Athens,  the  impression  is  always  the  same. 
How  magnificent  is  the  amphitheatre  in  the  centre  of 
which  stands  the  Acropolis ;  how  majestic  and  upsoaring 
is  the  grandest  of  all  ruins  on  its  immortal  steep ;  how 
incredibly  near  together  are  placed  these  mighty  memo- 
rials and  historic  sites ;  how  marvellously  small  is  the 
stage  on  which  these  undying  dramas  were  played  !  How 
sublime  is  ancient  Athens  in  its  loneliness  :  how  infini- 
tesimally  small  is  the  space  it  occupied  on  the  earth  ! 

The  situation  of  Athens  is  far  grander  than  that  of 
Rome,  or  Florence,  perhaps  even  that  of  Naples,  and  of 


THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

any  city  in  Europe  except  Constantinople,  which  is  a  wholly 
different  thing.  The  nearness  and  the  continuity  of  the 
mountain  amphitheatre  round  Athens,  the  great  height 
and  grand  form  of  the  mountains,  the  splendid  mass  and 
elevation  of  the  Acropolis  in  the  centre,  produce  an  im- 
pression more  strange,  simple,  and  imposing  than  any  city 
of  the  West.  From  the  distance  at  sea,  what  we  behold 
is  a  vast  ruin  on  a  noble  cliff.  If  we  do  not  so  much 
consider  beauty  and  picturesque  charm  such  as  that  of 
Naples,  Palermo,  Verona,  and  Venice,  but  mass,  unity,  and 
weight  of  stroke  in  the  impression,  we  may  well  feel  that 
in  simple,  and  it  may  be  almost  painful,  majesty,  nothing 
in  Western  Europe  can  equal  the  first  sight  of  Athens. 
And  what  a  mere  shelf  of  rock  it  looks,  buttressed  round 
by  mountains  on  all  sides  but  towards  the  sea !  Like  the 
rock  of  Gibraltar,  Athens  stands  an  imposing  mass  tower- 
ing out  of  the  sea,  lonely,  unapproachable  by  landward, 
and  hardly  habitable  apart  from  the  sea  ;  suggesting  at 
first  sight  far  off  empire  across  the  sea,  useless  and  unin- 
telligible, except  as  the  impregnable  fastness  of  a  sea-born 
race. 

Attica  itself  is  a  mere  rocky  shelf  opening  down  to 
the  sea,  but  with  nothing  around  it  or  behind  it  landwards, 
except  jagged  mountain  peaks,  defiles,  and  citadels  held 
by  her  enemies  and  rivals.  As  we  stand  on  the  Propylaea 
and  survey  the  magnificent  panorama  of  rock,  promontory, 
crags,  gorges,  and  mountain  ranges  one  beyond  the  other, 
rising  into  the  sky,  5000,  6000,  even  8000  feet,  we  are  look- 
ing on  soil  trodden  by  the  fiercest  enemies  of  Athens  in 
the  days  of  her  greatest  strength,  by  Boeotians,  Argives, 
Corinthians,  Achaeans,  and  Arcadians.  An  Athenian 
thus  lived  ever  in  full  'view  of  the  home  of  his  enemies, 
and  could  behold  some  of  the  most  memorable  scenes  in 
his  own  history,  and  also  the  birthplace  and  the  tombs  of 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS.  2Q3 

some  of  his  most  famous  chiefs.  The  history  of  Athens, 
its  triumphs  and  its  weakness,  had  for  its  cradle  one  single 
rocky  amphitheatre.  And  yet,  as  Comte  has  finely  put  it, 
it  was  easier  for  her  to  conquer  a  wide  empire  on  the  seas, 
than  it  was  to  subdue  a  neighbouring  state  within  a  day's 
march  of  her  citadel.  She  could  plant  her  trophies,  her 
colonies,  and  her  subject  cities  all  over  the  Mediterranean, 
from  Sicily  in  the  West,  to  the  Propontis  on  the  North, 
and  to  Crete  and  Rhodes  in  the  East ;  but  she  never 
could  subdue  many  a  petty  republic,  whose  territory  could 
be  seen  as  the  citizens  climbed  the  great  staircase  to  the 
shrine  of  Athene. 

Let  every  traveller  hasten  to  reach  the  top  of  Mount 
Pentelicus.  It  is  loftier  than  Snowdon  ;  but  it  is  only 
some  twelve  miles  from  Athens,  a  morning  walk  for  the 
average  hill-climber.  In  the  hollow  which  seems  to  lie 
beneath  our  feet,  as  we  gaze  on  the  wonderful  scene  from 
the  summit,  the  Acropolis,  with  the  Parthenon  and  Propy- 
laea  portico,  dominate  the  basin  of  Athens.  It  is  easy  to 
mark  the  Pnyx  where  Themistocles  and  Pericles,  Alci- 
biades  and  Demosthenes  addressed  the  people ;  there  is 
the  agora  where  Socrates  stood  and  questioned  all  who 
cared  to  answer  ;  there  is  Mars'  Hill  where  Paul  spoke  to 
philosophers  and  idlers  about  the  Unknown  God.  One 
can  almost  make  out  the  olive  grove  which  still  seems  to 
mark  the  site  of  Plato's  Academy,  and  not  far  from  it  the 
knoll  which  marks  Colonos,  the  birthplace  of  Sophocles, 
the  scene  of  his  exquisite  drama  of  the  exiled  CEdipus. 
In  the  two  hundred  years  that  sever  the  age  of  Pisis- 
tratus  from  that  of  Demosthenes,  what  a  harvest  of  genius 
in  all  forms  of  human  power  —  in  war,  art,  poetry,  policy, 
philosophy  —  has  been  gathered  from  that  little  field,  which 
from  our  mountain  top  looks  like  a  few  bare,  barren,  sun- 
baked acres  !  What  an  outburst  of  human  activity  and 


294  THE    C1TY    IN    HISTORY. 

invention  in  that  dazzling  light  and  purity  of  atmosphere, 
where,  as  their  poet  says,  they  passed  their  days  '  in  dainty 
delight,  in  most  pellucid  air,'  or  as  our  own  poet  has 
said  — 

'  Where,  on  the  ^gean  shore,  a  city  stands 
Built  nobly,  pure  the  air  and  light  the  soil  — ' 

The  atmosphere  of  Athens  still  seems  to  be  light  rather 
than#z>:  its  soil  seems  to  be  not  earth,  but  the  dust  of 
white  marble. 

Still  standing  on  Pentelicus,  we  may  see  a  little  further 
Piraeus  and  the  three  ports  beside  the  blue  gulf,  from 
whence  some  thousand  fleets  of  triremes  have  set  sail  for 
all  parts  of  the  Mediterranean.  And  just  across  the  thin 
streak  of  blue  rises  the  island  of  Salamis.  The  water 
beneath  it  is  the  scene  of  the  most  famous  sea-fight  in 
history :  beyond,  the  hills  look  down  on  the  birthplace  of 
^Eschylus :  in  the  distance  rise  up  the  crag  of  Aero- 
Corinth  and  the  mountains  of  Argolis,  Cithaeron,  Helicon, 
Parnes,  and  Hymettus.  To  the  west  and  south,  half  Greece 
can  be  outlined,  or  traced  by  its  topmost  peaks  and  dis- 
tant islands.  If  we  turn  northwards,  beneath  our  feet,  an 
hour  or  two  on  foot  below  us,  lies  a  quiet,  drowsy  plain 
along  the  sea-coast,  sheltered  by  the  vast  ranges  of  Eubcea. 
That  quiet,  drowsy  plain  is  Marathon,  where  Greeks  first 
met  the  Mede  in  arms  in  the  great  day  of  the  Athenian 
glory.  The  tumulus  still  to  be  seen  was  always  known  as 
the  sepulchre  of  the  Athenian  warriors.  Along  the  reedy 
shore  vEschylus  and  his  brothers  fought  in  the  desperate 
embarcation  of  the  Persians.  And  in  the  northern  dis- 
tance we  see  the  mountains  which  tower  above  Ther- 
mopylae. This  union  of  magnificent  scenery  with  so  large 
a  prospect  over  historic  scenes,  this  vast  panorama  over 
the  memorials  of  events  commemorated  in  the  greatest 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS.  295 

poetry  and  prose  of  the  world,  makes  the  view  from  Pen- 
telicus  live  in  the  memory  with  that  other  prospect  from 
the  campanile  of  the  Capitol  at  Rome. 

The  nearness  of  every  one  of  these  historic  scenes,  the 
infinitely  petty  stage  which  these  immortal  men  of  genius 
trod  in  life,  the  brief  moment  of  human  history  into  which 
they  were  crowded,  takes  away  the  breath.  Here  in  a 
town  of  very  moderate  size  and  population,  within  the 
span  of  one  human  life,  there  lived  and  worked  Miltiades, 
Themistocles,  Pericles,  Alcibiades,  vEschylus,  Sophocles, 
Euripides,  Aristophanes,  Pheidias,  Thucydides,  Socrates, 
Plato,  some  of  the  most  brilliant  generals,  statesmen,  poli- 
ticians known  to  universal  history,  the  greatest  tragic 
genius,  the  greatest  comic  genius,  the  supreme  art  genius 
recorded  in  the  annals  of  mankind,  the  great  master  of 
philosophic  history,  two  out  of  the  three  great  chiefs  of 
ancient  philosophy.  All  of  these  were  born  and  bred 
within  walking  distance  of  this  unique  spot,  and  all  of 
them  within  little  more  than  a  hundred  years.  There  is 
nothing  like  this  in  the  whole  history  of  mankind.  Even 
in  Florence,  Giotto,  Dante,  Leonardo,  Michael  Angelo, 
and  Galileo,  were  separated  by  nearly  four  centuries ;  and 
in  Judaea,  from  Samuel  to  Ezekiel,  we  may  possibly  count 
some  six  centuries.  It  is  this  sudden  blazing  up  of 
supreme  genius  on  this  mere  speck  of  rock  for  one  short 
period  —  and  then  utter  silence  —  which  makes  the  undy- 
ing charm  of  this  magic  spot  of  earth. 

What  a  light  this  throws  on  ancient  history !  As  we 
stand  on  Pentelicus,  with  the  Acropolis,  Marathon,  Sala- 
mis,  Piraeus,  and  Eleusis  at  our  feet,  we  behold  bays, 
plains,  and  hills,  the  dwellers  wherein  were  ever  strangers 
and  enemies  of  Athens.  No  Megarian,  no  Argive,  no 
Corinthian,  no  Boeotian,  ever  could  become  a  citizen  or 
share  in  the  political  and  religious  privileges  of  Athene. 


296  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

Homer,  Sappho,  Pindar,  Theocritus,  Pythagoras,  Aristotle, 
Archimedes,  and  Hipparchus  were  mere  foreigners  at 
Athens,  aliens  and  sojourners  amongst  the  lawful  citizens. 
Let  him  cross  that  narrow  streak  of  blue  sea,  and  the 
Corinthian  at  Athens,  or  the  Athenian  at  Corinth,  was 
what  the  Parisian  is  at  Berlin,  or  the  Prussian  in  Paris. 
What  would  England  be,  if  a  Kent  man  were  an  alien  in 
Essex,  if,  from  the  hill  at  Sydenham,  the  Londoner  looked 
on  a  people  with  whom  he  could  neither  trade,  nor  wor- 
ship, nor  intermarry,  nor  hold  civil  or  military  relations  ? 
What,  if  from  the  dome  of  St.  Paul's  the  Londoner  looked 
down  on  the  city  wherein  were  born  and  passed  their 
whole  lives  Alfred,  Edward,  Cromwell,  Shakespeare,  Mil- 
ton, Bacon,  Newton,  and  Scott,  Byron,  Shelley,  and 
Wordsworth ;  if  from  Primrose  Hill,  he  could  look  down 
on  the  fields  of  Azincourt  and  Blenheim,  of  Trafalgar  and 
Waterloo.  Now  at  Athens,  the  Athenian  looked  day  by 
day  on  the  home  of  his  national  heroes,  on  the  scenes  of 
his  national  glory,  and  the  works  of  his  greatest  artists, 
and  also  on  the  frowning  strongholds  of  his  deadly  enemies. 
It  requires  an  effort  to  bring  home  to  the  mind  the 
small  scale  of  ancient  Athens.  It  does  not  seem  within 
the  old  walls  to  have  exceeded  a  square  mile,  about  the 
area  of  Hyde  Park  and  Kensington  Gardens,  and  one-hun- 
dredth part  of  London.  Out  of  this  space,  the  Acropolis, 
wholly  devoted  to  public  buildings,  the  Areopagus,  the 
Pnyx,  and  the  Agora  must  have  occupied  at  least  one-tenth. 
But  a  few  hundred  acres,  or  the  area  of  one  of  the  large 
London  parks,  remained  for  private  houses.  These  were 
mainly  of  wood  and  plaster,  principally  used  at  night.  Of 
mansions  for  private  citizens,  of  a  permanent  kind  there  is 
no  vestige  nor  any  reference  in  classical  times.  The  nor- 
mal population  could  hardly  have  exceeded  25,000  full  citi- 
zens ;  and  we  cannot  believe  that  the  city  and  the  ports 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS.  297 

together  could  ever  have  contained  200,000  souls,  even 
counting  slaves,  strangers,  women,  and  children. 

Their  whole  life  was  public  :  their  main  life  was  spent 
in  the  open  air.  Their  homes  were  shelters  at  night,  with 
harems  for  the  women  and  children.  The  climate  of 
Athens  is  such  that  nothing  to  be  called  winter  cold  occurs 
between  the  end  of  February  and  the  middle  of  December, 
and  rain  seldom  falls  between  May  and  the  end  of  October. 
We  must  imagine  the  Athenians  of  the  great  age  as  a  very 
small  class  of  free  and  privileged  men,  personally  known 
to  each  other,  living  on  terms  of  absolute  equality,  passing 
their  lives  in  public,  mainly  in  the  porticoes,  colonnades, 
temples,  and  market-places,  having  little  serious  work  ex- 
cept in  time  of  war,  with  strong  civic  patriotism,  and  in- 
tense local  superstitions,  lounging  about  with  a  noble  sense 
of  superiority  like  the  officers  of  the  guard  in  some  military 
capital.  They  were  educated  in  certain  things  and  in  cer- 
tain modes  beyond  the  wildest  dream  of  modern  culture, 
with  all  hard  work  committed  to  slaves,  all  cares  of  the 
household  to  women :  passionately  keen  about  grace, 
beauty,  wit,  and  intellect.  Their  culture  consisted  of 
poetry,  mythology,  music,  gymnastics,  arithmetic,  the  art 
of  conversation,  infinite  subtlety  in  the  use  of  their  own 
language,  and  abnormal  sensitiveness  to  rhythm,  grace  of 
expression,  wit,  and  all  forms  of  beauty.  So  they  lived 
daintily,  as  their  poet  said,  in  a  balmy  flood  of  light,  sur- 
rounded by  temples,  statues,  porticoes,  shrines,  and  paint- 
ings, and  at  every  corner  of  their  city  dominated  by  the 
radiant  majesty  of  the  Acropolis  and  its  divine  Guardian. 

It  is  not  easy  to  conceive  the  effect  of  a  building  of 
Pentelic  marble  in  that  atmosphere  until  one  has  seen  it 
on  the  spot.  But  when  we  behold  a  new  marble  colonnade 
in  that  pellucid  air,  sparkling  like  the  Silberhorn  peak  of 
the  Jungfrau  in  the  early  morning  light,  we  instantly  com- 


298  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

prehend  the  peculiarities  of  that  style.  A  Doric  pediment 
in  London  no  more  enables  us  to  understand  a  temple  at 
Athens  than  the  bronze  Achilles  of  Hyde  Park  recalls  to 
us  the  Athene  Promachos  of  Pheidias.  The  Vestry  of  the 
Church  of  St.  Pancras  in  Euston  Square  is  not  more  like 
the  Erechtheum  than  the  pediment  of  St.  Martin's  in  the 
Fields  is  like  the  Parthenon.  The  British  Museum,  the 
only  tolerable  Greek  building  in  London,  looks  somewhat 
as  a  Greek  temple  might  look  during  the  eruption  of  a 
volcano.  Two  thousand  three  hundred  and  twenty-five 
years  have  tinged  the  Parthenon  and  the  Propylaea  a  deep 
orange  or  russet.  But  a  new  building  of  Pentelic  marble 
in  the  sky  of  Athens  stands  out  soft,  white,  and  dazzling 
with  light.  In  the  modern  edifices  of  new  Athens,  built 
from  the  same  quarry,  we  see  the  pearly  radiance  of  the 
marble,  the  need  and  the  uses  of  colour,  the  repose  and 
coolness  of  these  spacious  colonnades  and  that  which  has 
been  the  puzzle  of  antiquarians  —  the  entire  absence  of 
windoiv.  We  are  quite  unable  to  conceive  buildings  with- 
out windows  :  we  cannot  work  windows  into  Greek  designs. 
At  Athens  we  see  that  a  colonnade  of  Pentelic  marble 
lights  itself,  and  in  the  sweetest  way.  The  marble  is  semi- 
transparent.  It  diffuses,  reflects,  and  harmonises  sunlight 
in  so  mysterious  a  manner  that  a  marble  hall  is  bathed  in 
a  subdued  and  delicious  glow. 

If  we  revive  in  imagination  the  Acropolis  as  it  stood  in 
its  perfection,  we  see  with  new  force  the  undoubted  historic 
truth,  that  the  Athenians,  in  spite  of  their  restlessness, 
audacity,  and  individuality,  were  intensely  conservative  in 
ideas,  slavishly  superstitious  about  spiritual  evils,  and  as 
St.  Paul  told  them  on  Mars'  Hill,  too  much  bound  by  obso- 
lete scruples.  The  condemnation  to  death  of  Socrates  and 
of  Aristotle,  the  extreme  timidity  of  Aristotle's  utterances, 
the  panic  about  the  Hermae,  the  mob-fury  after  the  battle 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS.  299 

of  Arginusae  prove  it  historically.  But  it  is  equally  patent 
in  their  art.  It  is  obvious  that  a  Doric  temple  was  slowly 
developed  out  of  a  small  shrine  having  beams  and  pillars 
of  wood.  The  form  was  rigidly  maintained  when  the 
material  and  the  scale  were  changed  ;  and,  when  temples 
were  built  of  a  vast  size,  they  were  still  ornamented  and 
designed  on  the  old  methods,  however  inapplicable  these 
had  become.  As  we  stand  beneath  the  peristyle  and  pedi- 
ment of  the  Parthenon,  we  cannot  fail  to  see  that,  in  a 
building  of  those  grand  dimensions  and  towering  position, 
the  lovely  frieze  and  even  the  majestic  figures  of  the  pedi- 
ment, must  have  been  sacrificed,  so  far  as  they  never  could 
be  properly  seen.  Pheidias  could  not  have  been  blind  to 
this  cruel  result  of  antique  convention.  But  neither  he 
nor  Pericles  would  have  dared  to  transgress  the  sacred 
canons  in  which  art  was  bound. 

The  superstitious  bigotry  of  the  Athenians  appears  in 
their  history,  their  habits,  their  institutions,  their  language, 
and  the  uniformity  of  their  architecture.  Stand  on  the 
spot  and  recall  the  Acropolis  in  its  glory,  and  you  will  feel 
that  there  must  have  been  after  all  a  profound  monotony 
and  rigidity  in  those  eternal  colonnades  and  unvarying 
architraves.  The  arch  was  unknown  in  the  fine  age ;  the 
temples  were  all  built  on  one  or  two  uniform  patterns ;  it 
was  left  to  Rome  to  develop  all  the  uses  of  arch,  tower, 
dome,  the  column  supporting  the  arch,  the  successive 
stories,  the  hemicycle,  and  groined  roof  —  all  the  intricate 
combinations  which  Rome  suggested  to  modern  architect- 
ure. Greece  remained  the  slave  of  its  traditions  and 
canons  of  art.  It  is  true  that  it  avoided  the  incongruities 
and  coarse  realism  of  later  Roman  art.  But  it  was  left  to 
Rome  to  make  art  progressive  even  in  its  corruption. 
Like  the  drama  of  Racine,  Attic  art  remained  perfect  in 
its  conventions.  But  its  conventions  were  iron  chains. 


30O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

Accepting  its  traditional  conventions,  we  cannot  doubt 
that  the  Acropolis  must  have  displayed  in  its  splendour 
the  most  imposing  mass  of  buildings  ever  raised  by  man. 
With  Pheidias  we  feel  in  presence  of  the  supreme  artist 
(he  was  far  more  than  sculptor)  — the  one  perfect  master 
in  the  history  of  art,  of  whose  faultless  genius  no  single 
side  was  weaker  or  less  noble  than  the  rest.  He  remains 
alone  of  men  (or  if  not  alone  then  it  may  be  with  Homer, 
Shakespeare,  Mozart)  one  whose  unerring  instinct  trans- 
muted into  beauty  every  form  of  the  world  around  him. 

There  is  one  aspect  of  Attic  art,  and  one  of  its  most 
impressive  types,  which  can  be  properly  seen  only  in 
Athens  itself.  This  is  the  monuments  of  the  dead:  of 
which  many  stand  in  the  ancient  cemetery  of  Cerameicus, 
and  many  are  collected  in  the  National  Museum.  In 
their  pensive  and  exquisite  pathos,  in  their  reserve,  in 
their  dignity  and  human  affection,  in  their  manly  simplic- 
ity —  in  frank,  pure,  social,  and  humane  acceptance  of 
death  in  all  its  pathos  and  all  its  solemnity,  these  Athenian 
monuments  may  be  taken  as  the  highest  type  of  funeral 
emblems  that  the  world  possesses.  They  present  an  as- 
pect of  Death  pensive,  affectionate,  social,  peaceful,  and 
beautiful.  There  is  nothing  of  the  ghastly  and  cruel  sym- 
bolism of  the  Middle  Ages,  nothing  of  the  stately  and 
pompous  mausoleums  dear  to  Roman  pride,  nothing  of  the 
impersonal  fatuity  of  our  modern  gravestones.  The  fam- 
ily group  is  gathered  to  take  its  last  farewell  of  the  depart- 
ing. He  or  she  is  not  stretched  on  a  bed  or  bier,  not 
sleeping,  not  wasted  by  sickness,  not  ecstatically  transfig- 
ured. They  sit  or  recline  in  all  their  health  and  beauty, 
sweetly  smiling,  as  a  loved  one  who  is  about  to  take  a  dis- 
tant voyage.  The  family  grouped  around  are  thoughtful, 
serious,  not  sad,  loving  and  tender,  but  not  overcome  with 
grief ;  they  too  take  a  long  farewell  of  the  traveller  about 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS.  3OI 

to  depart.  At  his  feet  lies  a  favourite  dog,  some  bird  or 
cherished  pet,  and  sometimes  in  an  obscure  corner  a  little 
slave  may  be  seen  howling  for  his  master.  But  only  slaves 
are  allowed  to  weep.  Sometimes  the  young  warrior  is 
mounted  on  his  steed,  sometimes  is  seen  charging  in  the 
midst  of  battle.  But,  for  the  most  part,  all  is  ideal  beauty, 
peace,  and  love. 

There  is  here  no  vain  pomp,  no  arrogance  of  wealth  and 
power,  heraldic  emblems,  swords,  coronets,  and  robes  of 
state.  Neither  is  there  the  horror  or  the  ecstasy,  the  im- 
possible angels,  the  grotesque  demons,  the  skulls  or  the 
palm  branches  with  which  we  moderns  have  been  wont 
to  bedizen  our  funeral  monuments.  It  recalls  to  us  our 
poet's  In  Memoriam  —  a  work  too  of  calm  and  ideal  art  — 
towards  the  latest  phase  of  the  poet's  bereavement.  It 
seems  as  if  the  sculptor  spoke  to  us  in  the  words  of  the 
late  Laureate  :  — 

'  No  longer  caring  to  embalm 

In  dying  songs  a  dead  regret, 

But  like  a  statue  solid  set, 
And  moulded  in  colossal  calm.' 

Impressions  —  first  impressions  of  Athens  throng  on 
the  mind  so  closely  and  so  vividly,  that  they  are  not  easily 
reduced  to  order.  A  visit  to  Athens  is  worth  the  study  of 
a  hundred  books,  whether  classical  or  recent.  Any  man 
who  has  sailed  round  Greece  from  the  Ionian  Sea  to  the 
,  and  up  the  Gulf  of  Corinth,  and  thence  to  that  of 
and  Eleusis,  at  once  perceives  that  Greece  was  des- 
tined by  nature  to  be,  not  so  much  the  country  of  a  settled 
nation,  as  the  mere  pied-a-terre  of  a  wonderful  race  whose 
mission  was  to  penetrate  over  the  whole  Mediterranean 
and  its  shores.  These  so-called  Greek  states,  celebrated 
in  the  immortal  pages  of  Thucydides,  were  but  petty 
cock-pits  wherein,  like  game  birds,  these  historic  republics 


3<D2  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

crowed,  strutted,  and  fought  each  other.  Greek  war,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  modern  armies,  was  but  the  playing 
at  soldiers  like  the  people  of  Lilliput  and  Blefuscu.  An 
army  which  could  not  defend  such  a  country  as  Attica 
from  invaders,  or  the  army  which  having  got  beneath  the 
Long-walls  could  not  take  Athens,  can  hardly  be  classed 
amongst  soldiers  at  all.  Scipio  or  Julius  Caesar  with  one 
legion  would  have  settled  the  Peloponnesian  war  in  a  few 
months.  As  we  behold  it  from  a  near  height,  we  see  that 
Athens  always  was,  and  always  must  be,  an  artificial  city, 
resting  entirely  on  its  control  of  the  sea  and  territory 
beyond  sea.  There  is  nothing  behind  Athens  to  support 
a  population,  and  there  never  can  be  anything.  Indeed 
in  continental  Greece  itself,  with  its  interminable  barren 
rocks,  there  is  no  room  for  anything  but  a  few  herds,  and 
sundry  patches  of  olives,  vines,  currants,  fruits,  and  to- 
bacco. Continental  Greece  is  in 'truth  a  mere  mountain 
rising  out  of  the  sea,  with  a  total  population  less  than  that 
of  the  city  of  Berlin. 

Greece  was  therefore  destined  to  be  a  sea  power  only, 
and,  in  recounting  its  achievements  on  land,  her  histo- 
rians are  liable  to  mislead  us  altogether.  The  Spartans 
no  doubt  remained  for  many  centuries  individually,  like 
Soudanese,  'first-class  fighting  men.'  But  they  knew 
nothing  of  scientific  war,  and  seem  throughout  their  his- 
tory to  have  been  commanded  by  mere  drill-sergeants. 
They  were,  as  a  Frenchman  irreverently  remarked  of  an- 
other brave  army,  'lions  led  by  asses.'  Their  stupidity, 
slowness,  incapacity  to  develop  the  art  of  war,  their  slavish 
adherence  to  routine  and  tradition,  prevented  them  for 
ever  being  really  effective ;  and,  though  they  were  a  race 
of  mere  soldiers,  they  never  became  a  really  war-like  race. 
The  Athenians,  however  good  at  sea,  were  on  land  untrust- 
worthy, excitable,  undisciplined  crowds  of  civilians.  They 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS.  303 

had  hours  of  heroism,  as  at  Marathon  ;  but,  after  all,  Mara- 
thon was  rather  a  moral  victory,  won  by  genius,  Jlan,  and 
a  sort  of  spasmodic  patriotism  which  astonished  the  victors 
as  much  as  the  defeated.  It  was  hardly  a  great  battle 
fought  out  on  a  regular  plan.  And,  after  Marathon,  the 
Athenians  did  nothing  very  great  on  land.  Their  cam- 
paigns were  unworthy  of  notice,  and  their  conduct  in  the 
field  has  that  character  of  unsteadiness  which  belongs  to 
citizen  levies.  The  Macedonians  under  Alexander  were 
trained  and  excellent  troops,  equal  perhaps  to  anything  in 
ancient  war ;  but  the  Macedonians  were  not  Greeks.  It 
is  melancholy  to  think  how  largely  the  attention  of  acad- 
emies and  schools  is  absorbed  in  these  trumpery  scuffles 
which  have  no  scientific  interest  of  their  own,  and  which, 
from  the  historical  point  of  view,  could  have  no  serious 
result. 

It  is  the  wonderful  literary  and  poetic  genius  of  Greece 
which  has  given  a  halo  to  these  petty  manoeuvres.  And 
to  the  same  cause  may  be  traced  the  singular  phenomenon 
of  the  revival  of  Hellenism  in  the  present  century,  by  a 
people  who,  as  a  whole,  have  but  a  tincture  of  Hellenic 
blood.  The  process  of  reviving  ancient  Greece  is  still 
proceeding  with  immense  rapidity,  and  in  curious  modes. 
Seventy  years  ago,  Greek  (or  RomaTc  as  it  was  called)  was 
a  tongue  only  spoken  by  certain  classes  in  certain  places ; 
and  it  was  in  no  sense  the  language  of  Xenophon  or  even 
Plutarch.  None  but  a  few  scholars  were  familiar  with  the 
term  Hellenes,  or  with  anything  of  Hellenic  history  or 
literature.  The  cultivated  men  of  Greece  have  now  placed 
the  current  Hellenic  tongue  much  nearer  to  that  of  Plu- 
tarch than  our  English  is  like  that  of  Chaucer ;  and  news- 
papers, written  in  a  language  which  Herodotus  could  easily 
follow,  are  circulated  as  far  as  Trieste  and  Constantinople. 
After  two  thousand  years,  a  language,  which  is  practically 


304  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

the  Greek  of  literature,  is  again  paramount  from  Corfu  to 
Crete,  from  Larissa  to  Cerigo,  from  the  Ionian  islands  to 
the  Sporades.  The  ancient  names,  the  ancient  architect- 
ure, the  ancient  taste  for  reading,  are  revived.  The  effect 
is  that  of  an  illusion.  One's  guide  is  Sophocles,  and  the 
cab-driver  is  Themistocles ;  one  drives  along  the  'O8o<? 
rE/?/4o{),  and  at  every  street  corner  one  sees  a  name  familiar 
to  us  in  Thucydides  and  Aristophanes,  and  many  an  absurd 
compound,  such  as  tTTTroo-t^poS/Do/io?,  or  tramway.  Of 
course  much  of  all  this  is  artificial,  and  irresistibly  comic, 
like  the  solemn  revival  of  Olympian  Games.  But  there  is 
enough  below  the  surface  to  be  counted  as  one  of  the  most 
curious  examples  of  the  subjective  filiation  of  ideas  to  be 
met  with  in  modern  times.  And  it  is  a  truly  pathetic 
illustration  of  the  imperishable  fascination  exerted  over 
all  after  ages,  by  the  genius  of  ancient  Hellas. 

The  revival  is  the  more  interesting,  since  few  competent 
observers  believe  in  the  survival  of  Hellenic  blood.  It  is 
needless  here  to  touch  on  the  obstinate  dispute  as  to  how 
much  of  the  blood  of  the  Hellenes  runs  in  the  veins  of 
the  modern  Greek  people.  In  certain  islands,  in  parts  of 
Peloponnesus,  in  certain  mountain  districts,  it  may  do  so 
to  a  qualified  extent.  In  some  parts  of  the  mainland,  it  is 
perhaps  almost  wholly  extinct,  and  Attica  is  one  of  the 
districts  where  the  immortal  fluid  is  the  thinnest  of  all. 
When  we  consider  how  greatly  Athens,  its  ports,  mines, 
and  territories,  was  even  in  ancient  times,  peopled  with 
alien  blood ;  how  that,  from  Christian  times  until  the 
present  generation,  the  population  of  Athens  had  sunk  to 
that  of  a  village ;  when  we  read  Gibbon's  scathing  picture 
of  what  Athens  was  a  hundred  years  ago,  or  even  Byron's 
prose  account  of  it  eighty  years  ago ;  when  we  learn  that 
sixty  years  ago,  when  it  became  a  capital,  it  had  only  300 
houses,  and  a  mixed  population  —  it  is  physically  certain 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS.  3O5 

that  the  130,000  inhabitants  of  Athens  and  the  Piraeus 
must  be  mainly  an  immigrant  people. 

The  fact  that  the  recrudescence  of  the  old  Attic  salt, 
even  in  its  peculiarities  and  foibles,  must  be  due  to  some 
intellectual  filiation  of  ideals  and  habits,  and  not  at  all 
to  race  inheritance,  makes  the  sight  of  the  re-Hellenisa- 
tion  of  Hellas  the  more  interesting  as  a  study.  If  we  read 
Byron's  melancholy  picture  of  Athens  and  the  Athenians, 
whilst  we  roam  in  the  bright  and  ambitious  city  of  King 
George  to-day,  we  may  note  one  of  the  most  singular 
transformations  that  modern  history  can  show  us.  Where 
the  poet  found  only  a  few  abject  slaves,  we  may  now  see 
one  of  the  most  busy  political  towns  in  Europe.  To  see 
pure  democracy,  as  described  by  Aristophanes,  we  should 
go,  not  to  New  York,  Paris,  or  East  London,  but  to 
Athens ;  and  there  watch  Demos  in  his  native  cradle, 
under  the  sky  of  Athene,  and  in  full  view  of  Propylaea  and 
Pnyx,  listening  with  passionate  keenness  to  his  favourite 
orator,  who,  in  the  language  of  Pericles  or  Cleon,  is  extoll- 
ing the  future  of  the  Hellenic  idea.  It  may  be  that  in  its 
indigenous  soil  the  art  of  ochlocratic  Bunkum  has  devel- 
oped with  unusual  profusion  ;  and  perhaps  the  Pan-Hellenic 
idea  has  given  rise  to  nonsense  even  worse  than  that  of 
the  Pan-Britannic  or  Pan-Slavonic  idea.  But  the  habit  of 
treating  the  aspirations  of  an  ambitious  young  nation  with 
supercilious  patronage,  and  of  ridiculing  their  really  won- 
derful material  progress,  is  not  reasonable  or  even  decent. 
The  extravagances  of  Hellenic  vanity  are  hardly  greater 
than  the  extravagances  of  national  vanity  in  many  parts 
of  the  Old  and  New  World.  And  the  progress  that  has 
been  made  by  Greece  in  sixty  years,  under  great  diffi- 
culties, and  with  very  narrow  resources,  is  a  fact  that 
cannot  be  denied. 

Greece  is  a  country  more  keenly  proud  and  more  fiercely 
U 


306  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

jealous  of  her  memorials  of  the  past  than  any  people  on 
the  face  of  the  earth.  The  remnants  of  the  great  age  are 
all  that  she  has  to  recall  the  history  out  of  which  her 
renewed  existence  as  a  nation  is  built.  They  are  to 
Greece  her  Magna  Charta,  her  Statute  Book,  her  West- 
minster Abbey,  her  St.  Stephen's  in  one.  She  is  making 
sacrifices  to  recover,  preserve,  and  display  every  fragment 
of  ancient  art.  Her  Museums  and  National  Collections 
are  quite  as  well  kept  as  ours,  and  quite  as  adequate  for 
their  purpose.  They  fill  a  far  larger  part  of  the  nation's 
interest  and  the  business  of  the  State  than  do  ours.  They 
are  quite  as  safe  as  those  of  Berlin,  Paris,  or  Rome,  and 
are  far  less  exposed  to  soot  and  damp  than  those  of  Lon- 
don. The  only  danger  that  could  threaten  them  would 
be  from  the  navy  of  some  Western  power.  The  time  then 
has  come,  on  grounds  of  international  morality,  to  restore 
the  sublime  fragments  which  severity  years  ago  an  English 
ambassador  tore  away  from  the  Parthenon.  English  liter- 
ature contains  an  enduring  protest  against  this  Vandalism, 
which  Lord  Byron  denounced  as  '  the  last  poor  plunder  of 
a  bleeding  land,'  — 

'  Curst  be  the  hour  when  from  their  isle  they  roved, 
And  once  again  thy  hapless  bosom  gored, 
And  snatch'd  thy  shrinking  gods  to  northern  climes  abhorred.' 

The  removal  of  these  stones  from  Athens  would  be 
impossible  in  our  age,  and  was  only  made  possible  by 
their  happening  to  be  within  the  power  of  an  Oriental 
despot.  Their  acquisition  can  reflect  nothing  but  dis- 
honour on  our  name:  as  Byron  said,  'the  honour  of  Eng- 
land is  not  advanced  by  plunder.'  But  the  conditions  of 
the  case  have  changed  :  and  the  '  Elgin  marbles '  stand  on 
a  footing  wholly  different  from  the  other  treasures  that 
our  Museums  possess.  These  collective  works  of  art,  of 


IMPRESSIONS    OF    ATHENS.  3O/ 

which  our  Museum  has  a  part,  still  remain  in  situ  where 
they  were  placed,  and  they  form  part  of  the  very  structure 
of  the  temple  which  still  stands  there  as  a  majestic  ruin. 
The  Greek  people  have  raised  on  the  Acropolis  itself  a 
national  museum,  where  every  fragment  of  the  ancient 
work  that  once  adorned  it,  is  religiously  preserved.  The 
collection  is  unique,  incomparable,  of  inestimable  value, 
and  is  constantly  being  increased.  It  derives  its  peculiar 
impressiveness  from  the  fact  that  these  priceless  relics 
still  remain  on  the  sacred  citadel  of  Athene,  under  the 
shadow  of  the  mighty  temple  of  which  they  formed  part. 
The  Parthenon  gains  a  new  charm  by  their  presence ; 
whilst  the  statues  gain  a  fresh  power  by  being  within  its 
precinct.  Pheidias,  Ictinus,  Pericles,  acquire  each  a  new 
dignity  in  our  eyes,  as  we  contemplate  the  ruin  and  its 
adornments  on  the  ever-consecrated  spot  where  such 
amazing  genius  laboured  and  thought. 

We  go  to  our  own  Museum,  and  we  are  wont  to  plume 
ourselves  on  the  diplomacy  and  taste  of  the  eminent  per- 
sonage who  secured  these  treasures.  We  say  they  are 
now  safe,  carefully  preserved,  and  accessible  to  every  one. 
Perhaps  it  was  wrong  to  steal  them,  but  now  that  it  is 
done,  it  cannot  be  mended.  In  the  meantime  the  British 
public  can  study  High  Art  at  its  leisure.  But  there  is 
something  above  High  Art,  and  that  is  national  honour, 
and  international  morality.  And  when,  in  the  enthusiasm 
of  a  first  visit  to  the  city  of  Plato,  Sophocles,  and  Pheidias, 
we  behold  the  empty  pediments  which  we  have  wrecked, 
and  the  blank  spaces  out  of  which  our  national  representa- 
tive tore  metopes  and  frieze,  when  we  see  the  terra-cotta 
Caryatid,  which  is  forced  to  do  duty  for  her  whom  we  have 
ravished  from  the  temple  of  Erechtheus  —  it  is  not  so  easy 
to  repeat  the  robber  sophism  :  having  plundered,  it  is  best 
to  keep  the  plunder.  One  day  the  conscience  of  England 


308  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

will  revive,  and  she  will  rejoice  to  restore  the  outraged 
emblems  of  Hellenic  art  to  the  glorious  sky,  where  only 
they  are  at  home,  on  that  immortal  rock,  and  beneath  the 
shadow  of  the  sublime  temple,  which  a  supreme  genius 
made  them  to  ennoble.  And  our  eloquent  discourses 
about  Art  will  gain  by  being  sweetened  with  honesty  and 
good  manners. 


CHAPTER    XI. 

CONSTANTINOPLE   AS   AN    HISTORIC    CITY.1 

I.  Byzantine  History. 

OF  all  the  cities  of  Europe  the  New  Rome  of  the 
Bosphorus,  in  its  power  over  the  imagination  of  men,  can 
yield  the  first  place  to  none  save  to  its  own  mother,  the 
Old  Rome  of  the  Tiber.  And  of  all  cities  of  the  world 
she  stands  foremost  in  beauty  of  situation,  in  the  marvel 
of  her  geographical  position,  as  the  eternal  link  between 
the  East  and  the  West.  We  may  almost  add  that  she  is 
foremost  in  the  vast  continuity  and  gorgeous  multiplicity 
of  her  historic  interests.  For  if  Constantinople  can  pre- 
sent us  with  nothing  that  can  vie  in  sublimity  and  pathos 
with  the  memories  of  Rome,  Athens,  Jerusalem,  it  has  for 
the  historic  mind  a  peculiar  fascination  of  its  own,  in  the 
enormous  persistence  of  imperial  power  concentrated  under 
varied  forms  in  one  unique  spot  of  our  earthly  globe. 

Byzantium,  to  use  that  which  has  been  the  ordinary 
name  with  all  Greek  writers  from  Herodotus  down  to 
Paspates  in  our  own  day,  is  one  of  the  oldest  cities  of 
Europe:  historically  speaking,  if  we  neglect  mere  pre- 
historic legend,  little  younger  than  Athens  or  Rome. 
Like  them,  Byzantium  appears  to  have  been  founded  on 
a  pre-historic  fort.  Hardly  any  of  the  ancient  towns  of 
Italy  and  Southern  Europe  can  show  so  authentic  and 
venerable  a  record.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that 

1  Fortnightly  Review,  April,  1894,  No.  328,  vol.  55. 
309 


3IO  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

Byzantium  has  been  a  historic  city  for  some  25 50  years: 
during  the  whole  of  that  period,  with  no  real  break  in  her 
life,  it  has  been  the  scene  of  events  recorded  in  the  annals 
of  mankind ;  it  has  been  fought  for  and  held  by  men 
famous  in  world  history,  it  has  played  a  substantive  part 
in  the  drama  of  civilisation.  So  singular  a  sequence  of 
historic  interest  can  hardly  be  claimed  for  any  city  in 
Europe,  except  for  Rome  herself. 

For  nearly  a  thousand  years  before  it  became  the  capi- 
tal of  an  empire,  Byzantium  was  a  Greek  city  of  much 
importance,  the  prize  of  contending  nations,  and  with 
striking  prescience  even  then  chosen  out  by  philosophic 
historians  for  its  commanding  position  and  immense  capa- 
bilities. After  the  lapse  of  nearly  a  thousand  years,  By- 
zantium became  Constantinople,  the  centre  of  the  Roman 
Empire.  Since  then  it  has  been  the  capital  city  of  an 
empire  for  exactly  1 564  years  —  and  that  in  a  manner  and 
for  a  period  such  as  no  other  imperial  city  has  been  in  the 
annals  of  civilised  man.  There  is  no  actual  break  ;  although, 
for  the  dynasty  of  the  Palaeologi,  from  the  Latin  Empire 
down  to  the  capture  by  the  Ottomans,  the  empire  outside 
the  capital  had  a  shrunken  and  almost  phantom  dominion. 
But  it  is  yet  true,  that  for  1564  years  Constantinople  has 
ever  been,  and  still  is,  the  sole  regular  residence  of  Em- 
perors and  Sultans,  the  sole  and  continuous  centre  of  civil 
and  military  administration,  the  supreme  court  of  law  and 
justice,  and  the  official  centre  of  the  imperial  religion. 

During  all  this  period,  the  life  of  the  empire  has  been 
concentrated  in  that  most  wonderful  peninsula,  as  its 
heart  and  its  head.  It  has  been  concentrated  for  a  far  longer 
period,  and  in  a  more  definite  way,  than  even  it  was  in 
the  original  Seven  Hills ;  for  Rome  herself  was  the  local 
seat  of  empire  for  scarcely  four  centuries,  and  even  for 
that  in  an  intermittent  form  :  and  vast  as  has  been  the  con- 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  311 

tinuity  of  the  Roman  Church  for  at  least  thirteen  centuries, 
its  life,  and  even  its  official  government,  have  had  many 
seats  and  continual  movements.  But  from  the  days  of 
Constantine,  Constantinople  has  been,  both  in  the  tem- 
poral and  spiritual  domains,  the  centre,  the  home,  the  pal- 
ladium of  the  empire  of  the  East.  For  fifteen  centuries 
the  Lord  of  Constantinople  has  never  ceased  to  be  the 
Lord  of  the  contiguous  East ;  and,  whilst  sea  and  rock 
hold  in  their  accustomed  places,  the  Lord  of  Constanti- 
nople must  continue  to  be  Lord  of  South-Eastern  Europe 
and  of  North-Western  Asia. 

This  continuity  and  concentration  of  imperial  rule  in  an 
imperial  city  have  no  parallel  in  the  history  of  mankind. 
Rome  was  the  local  centre  of  empire  for  barely  four  cen- 
turies, and  for  sixteen  centuries  she  has  wholly  lost  that 
claim.  The  royal  cities  that  once  flourished  in  the  valleys 
of  the  Ganges,  the  Euphrates,  or  the  Nile,  were  all  aban- 
doned after  some  centuries  of  splendour,  and  have  long  lost 
their  imperial  rank.  Memphis,  Babylon,  Tyre,  Carthage, 
Alexandria,  Syracuse,  Athens,  had  periods  of  glory,  but  no 
great  continuity  of  empire.  London  and  Paris  have  been 
great  capitals  for  at  most  a  few  centuries  ;  and  Madrid, 
Berlin,  Vienna,  and  St.  Petersburg  are  things  of  yesterday 
in  the  long  roll  of  human  civilisation.  There  is  but  one 
city  of  the  world  of  which  it  can  be  said  that,  for  fifteen 
centuries  and  a  half,  it  has  been  the  continuous  seat  of 
empire,  under  all  the  changes  of  race,  institutions,  customs, 
and  religion.  And  this  may  be  ultimately  traced  to  its 
incomparable  physical  and  geographical  capabilities. 

Mere  duration  of  imperial  power  and  variety  of  histori- 
cal interest  are  indeed  far  different  from  true  greatness  or 
national  dignity.  But  as  an  object  of  the  historical  imag- 
ination, the  richness  of  the  record,  in  the  local  annals  of 
some  world-famous  spot,  cannot  fail  to  kindle  our  thoughts. 


312  THE    CITY    IN   HISTORY. 

History,  alas !  is  not  the  record  of  pure  virtue  and  peace- 
ful happiness :  it  is  the  record  of  deeds  big  with  fate 
to  races  of  men,  of  passions,  crimes,  follies,  heroisms,  and 
martyrdoms  in  the  mysterious  labyrinth  of  human  destiny. 
The  stage  whereon,  over  so  vast  a  period  of  man's  mem- 
ory, ten  thousand  of  such  tragedies  have  been  enacted, 
holds  with  a  spell  the  mind  of  every  man  who  is  in  sym- 
pathy with  human  nature,  and  who  loves  to  meditate  on 
the  problems  of  human  progress. 

History  and  European  opinion  have  been  until  lately 
most  unjust  to  the  Byzantine  empire,  whether  in  its 
Roman,  its  Greek,  or  in  its  Ottoman  form.  By  a  singular 
fatality  its  annals  and  its  true  place  have  been  grossly 
misunderstood.  Foreign  scholars,  German,  French,  Rus- 
sian, and  Greek,  have  done  much  in  recent  years  to  repair 
this  error ;  and  English  historians,  though  late  in  the 
field,  are  beginning  to  atone  for  neglect  in  the  past. 
Finlay  worthily  led  the  way,  in  spite  of  sympathies  and 
antipathies  which  almost  incapacitate  an  historian  from 
fully  grasping  Byzantine  history ;  Professor  Freeman 
struck  the  true  note  in  some'  of  his  most  weighty  and 
pregnant  pieces,  perhaps  the  most  original  and  brilliant  of 
his  essays;  and  now  Professor  Bury,  of  Dublin,  has  un- 
dertaken the  task  of  casting  into  a  scientific  and  syste- 
matic history  those  wonderful  narratives  of  which  Gibbon 
gave  us  detached  and  superb  sketches,  albeit  with  limited 
resources  and  incomplete  knowledge.  Edwin  Pears,  in 
a  fine  monograph,  has  given  us  very  much  more  than 
the  history  of  the  Fourth  Crusade.1  And  the  incessant 

1  History  of  Greece,  from  146  B.C.  to  A.D.  1864,  by  George  Finlay,  ed.  by 
H.  F.  Tozer,  7  vols.;  Historical  Essays,  by  E.  A.  Freeman,  third  series, 
1879;  The  Later  Roman  Empire,  from  395  A.D.  to  800  A.D.,  by  J.  B.  Bury, 
Trin.  Coll.  Dub.,  2  vols.,  1889;  The  Fall  of  Constantinople  in  the  Fourth 
Crusade,  by  Edwin  Pears,  LL.D.,  1885;  The  History  of  the  Byzantine  Em- 
pire, by  C.  Oman,  1893. 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  313 

labours  of  foreign  scholars  are  beginning  to  filter  even 
into  the  ideas  of  the  general  reader.  Russian  and  Greek 
monasteries  have  preserved  unknown  and  precious  chroni- 
cles ;  and  Armenian,  Saracen,  and  Persian  manuscripts 
have  lately  been  added  to  our  annals.  The  terrible  Corpus 
of  Byzantine  histories  becomes  less  heartbreaking  in  its 
dryness  and  its  affectation,  with  all  the  light  that  modern 
scholarship  has  thrown  upon  that  record  of  romantic  and 
tremendous  events,  too  often  told  by  official  annalists  with 
pedantic  dulness  and  cold-blooded  commonplace.  Krause, 
Hopf,  Heyd,  Gfrorer,  in  Germany ;  Sabatier,  Rambaud, 
Schlumberger,  Drapeyron,  Bayet,  in  France ;  Byzantios, 
and  Paspates,  in  Greece,  have  given  a  new  life  to  this 
vast  repertory  of  a  thousand  years  of  varying  fortune.1 

At  the  same  time,  the  local  archaeology  of  Constanti- 
nople has  received  a  new  impulse.  The  political  and 
economic  changes  which  resulted  from  the  course  of 
events,  from  the  Crimean  War  of  1853  to  the  Treaty  of 
San  Stefano  in  1878,  have  opened  Constantinople  much 
as  Japan  was  opened  thirty  years  ago.  European  scholars 
and  resident  Greeks  have  been  enabled  to  study  the  re- 
mains ;  the  Sultan  has  formed  a  most  interesting  museum 
under  Hamdi  Bey,  a  Turkish  archaeologist ;  and  Dr.  Pas- 
pates,  a  Greek  antiquarian,  has  attempted  in  the  cuttings 
and  works  of  the  new  railway,  almost  wholly  to  recon- 
struct Byzantine  topography.  The  vague  and  somewhat 
traditional  localisation  repeated  by  Banduri,  Ducange, 
Gyllius,  Busbecq,  and  the  rest,  has  now  been  corrected 
by  scientific  inspection  of  ruins  and  partial  excavation. 
The  ingenious  labours  of  Labarte,  Salzenberg,  Schlum- 

1  Sabatier,  Monnaies  Byzantines,  1862;  Rambaud,  L?  Empire  Grec  au 
Xme.  Sihle,  1870;  Drapeyron,  D  Empereur  Heraclius,  1869;  Schlumberger, 
Un  Empereur  Byzantin,  1890;  Krause,  Die  Byzantiner  des  Mittelalterst 
1869;  Gfrorer,  Byzantinische  Geschichten,  1872-1877. 


314  THE   CITY    IN   HISTORY. 

berger,  Bayet,  Mordtmann,  Riant,  and  others,1  have  been 
tested  by  some  new  excavations  on  the  spot.  No  one 
could  well  deal  with  Byzantine  antiquities  without  exam- 
ining the  works  of  the  late  Dr.  Paspates,  especially  of 
the  Byzantine  Palaces,  which  is  now  accessible  to  the 
English  reader  in  the  new  translation  of  Mr.  Metcalfe 

(1893). 

We  have  all  been  unjust  to  this  Byzantine  empire ;  and 
its  restoration  to  its  true  place  in  the  story  of  human 
civilisation  is  beyond  doubt  the  great  lacuna  of  our  cur- 
rent histories.  What  they  tell  us  is  mainly  the  story  of 
its  last  four  hundred  years  —  when  the  Eastern  empire 
was  dying  under  the  mortal  blows  inflicted  on  it  as  it 
stood  between  the  fanaticism  of  the  East  and  the  jeal- 
ousy of  the  West.  Of  the  seven  centuries  from  Theo- 
dosius  to  the  Crusades  we  hear  little  save  Palace  intrigues, 
though  these  years  were  the  true  years  of  glory  in  Byzan- 
tine history.  This  was  the  period  when  she  handed  down, 
and  handed  down  alone,  the  ancient  world  to  the  modern ; 
when  Constantinople  was  the  greatest  and  most  civilised 
city  in  Europe,  the  last  refuge  of  law,  arts,  and  learn- 
ing, the  precursor  of  the  Crusades  in  defending  Christian 
civilisation  by  four  centuries.  Before  the  Crusades  were 
undertaken  by  Europe,  the  Eastern  empire  was  falling 
into  corruption  and  decay.  But  down  to  the  middle  of 
the  eleventh  century,  more  or  less  continuously  from  the 
opening  of  the  seventh,  the  history  of  the  Eastern  Romans 
may  honourably  compare  with  the  history  of  Western  Eu- 

1  Banduri,  Imperium  Orientate,  1711,  2  vols.  fol.;  Ducange,  Constanti- 
nopolis  Christiana ;  Gyllius,  De  Topogr.  Constantin. ;  Busbecq,  Letters,  tr. 
by  Forster  and  Daniel,  2  vols.,  1881;  Salzenberg,  Alt-  Christliche  Baudenk- 
male,  1854,  fol.;  Labarte,  Le  Palais  Imperial,  de  Constantinople,  4to,  1861; 
Paspates,  Bvfavrival  MeX^rat,  1877;  Hvfavrivd.  'AvaKTopa,  1885;  HoXiopicla 
Kal  a'Xw<ns,  1890;  Professor  van  Millingen,  in  Murray's  Handbook,  new  ed., 
1893;  Byzantios,  KuvffTavTivoviro\is,  1851-59,  3  vols. 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  315 

rope,  whilst  in  certain  essential  elements  of  civilisation, 
they  stood  not  merely  first  in  Europe,  but  practically 
alone.  If  Chosroes,  or  Muaviah,  or  Haroun,  or  Crumn, 
had  succeeded  in  blotting  out  the  empire  of  the  Bos- 
phorus,  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  from  whence  we  should 
have  been  able  to  recover  either  Roman  law,  or  Hellenic 
art,  or  ancient  poetry  and  learning,  or  the  complex  art  of 
organised  government,  or  the  traditions  and  manufactures 
of  cultured  civilisation.  At  any  rate,  the  whole  history 
of  mankind  would  have  taken  a  different  course. 

Neither  under  Roman,  Greek,  or  Ottoman  has  the 
empire  been,  except  at  intervals,  the  abyss  of  corrup- 
tion, servility,  and  vice  that  Western  prejudice  has  too 
long  imagined.  Horrors,  follies,  meanness,  and  pedantry 
abound ;  but  there  is  still  a  record  rich  in  heroism,  intel- 
lectual energy,  courage,  skill,  and  perseverance,  which  are 
as  memorable  as  any  in  the  world.  Neither  the  intellect, 
nor  the  art,  nor  the  religion  are  those  of  Western  Europe  ; 
nor  have  we  there  the  story  of  a  great  people  or  a  purify- 
ing Church,  of  a  profound  philosophy,  or  a  progressive 
civilisation.  Constantinople  is,  and  always  has  been,  as 
much  Eastern  as  Western  —  yet  with  much  that  is  neither 
of  the  East  nor  of  the  West  —  but  special  to  itself.  It 
is  a  type  of  Conservatism,  of  persistency  and  constancy 
unparalleled,  amidst  change,  decay,  and  defeat.  This 
miraculous  longevity  and  recuperative  power  seem  to  go 
counter  to  all  the  lessons  of  Western  Europe;  or" in  the 
West  they  are  to  be  matched  only  by  the  recuperative 
power  of  the  Catholic  Church.  The  city  and  the  Church, 
which  date  from  Constantine,  have  both  in  these  fifteen 
centuries  shown  a  strange  power  of  recovery  from  mortal 
maladies  and  hopeless  difficulties.  But  the  recovery  of 
temporal  dominion  is  always  more  rare  than  the  revival 
of  spiritual  ideas.  And  in  recuperative  energy  and  tenac- 


316  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

ity  of  life,  the  empire  of  the  Bosphorus,  from  Constantine 
to  Abdul  Hamid,  is  one  long  paradox. 

The  continuity  of  empire  in  Constantinople  suffered,  it 
is  true,  a  tremendous  breach  in  dynasty,  in  race,  and  in 
religion,  by  the  conquest  of  the  Turks  ;  and,  if  it  were  a 
Christian,  and  Roman,  or  Latin,  or  Greek  empire  for  1123 
years,  it  has  been  a  Moslem  and  Ottoman  empire  for  441 
years.  To  many  historians  these  441  years  have  been  a 
period  of  Babylonish  captivity  for  the  chosen  people.  But 
those  who  are  not  especially  Philhellene  or  Philorthodox, 
in  any  absolute  sense,  will  view  this  great  problem  without 
race  or  sectarian  animosities.  Before  the  impartial  judg- 
ment-seat of  history  the  lesson  of  the  past  lies  in  the  un- 
folding of  genius  in  government  and  in  war,  in  organising 
nations,  and  in  moulding  their  destinies  ;  and  where  these 
great  capacities  exist,  there  is  no  room  to  indulge  the  prej- 
udices of  a  partisan.  The  two  centuries  of  Stamboul 
which  follow  the  conquest  of  Mohammed  the  Second,  in 
1453,  are  greatly  superior  in  interest  and  in  teaching  to 
the  two  centuries  of  Byzantine  empire  which  precede  it, 
and  the  miserable  tale  of  the  Latin  usurpation.  Nor  has 
the  whole  Ottoman  rule  of  four  centuries  and  a  half  been 
less  brilliant,  less  rich  in  great  intellects  and  great  charac- 
ters, than  the  Byzantine  empire  from  the  time  of  the  Cru- 
sades till  its  fall  —  perhaps  even  not  more  oppressive  to 
its  subjects,  nor  more  antagonistic  to  moral  and  social 
progress.  The  marvellous  city  that  Constantine  created  in 
330  A.D.  has  been  ever  since  that  day  the  effective  seat  of 
such  government  as  the  Eastern  regions  around  it  could 
maintain,  of  such  civilisation  as  they  could  evolve,  and  of 
such  religious  union  as  they  were  able  to  receive.  That 
empire,  that  type  of  society,  seem  preparing  to-day  for  an 
ultimate  withdrawal  into  Asia.  But  with  such  a  record  of 
persistence  and  revival,  such  tenacity  of  hold  on  a  sacred 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  317 

and  imperial  centre,  few  can  forecast  the  issue  with  confi- 
dence. And  that  future  is  assuredly  amongst  the  most 
fascinating  enigmas  which  can  engage  the  meditations  of 
thinking  men. 

It  is  an  acute  remark  of  the  late  Professor  Freeman  that 
the  history  of  the  empire  is  the  history  of  the  capital.  The 
imperial,  religious,  legal,  and  commercial  energy  of  the 
Eastern  empire  has  always  centred  in  Constantinople,  by 
whomsoever  held,  in  a  way  that  can  hardly  be  paralleled  in 
European  history.  The  Italian  successors  of  Julius  and 
Augustus  for  the  most  part  spent  their  lives  and  carried  on 
their  government  very  largely,  and  at  last  almost  wholly, 
away  from  Rome.  Neither  had  the  Western  Emperors, 
nor  the  chiefs  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  any  permanent 
and  continuous  seat.  The  history  of  England  and  that  of 
France  are  associated  with  many  historic  towns  and  many 
royal  residences  far  from  London  and  from  Paris.  Nor  do 
the  histories  of  Spain,  Italy,  or  Germany,  offer  us  any  con- 
stant capital  or  any  single  centre  of  government,  religion, 
law,  commerce,  and  art.  But  of  the  nearly  one  hundred 
sovereigns  of  the  Eastern  empire,  and  of  the  twenty-eight 
Caliphs  who  have  succeeded  them  in  Byzantium,  during 
that  long  epoch  of  1564  years,  from  the  day  of  its  founda- 
tion, Constantinople  has  been  the  uniform  residence  of  the 
sovereign,  except  when  on  actual  campaign  in  time  of  war 
or  on  some  imperial  progress ;  and  in  peace  and  in  war 
under  all  dynasties,  races,  and  creeds,  it  has  never  ceased 
to  be  the  seat  of  official  government,  the  supreme  tribunal, 
and  the  metropolis  of  the  religious  system. 

From  the  age  of  Theodosius  down  to  the  opening  of  the 
Crusades  —  a  period  of  seven  centuries  —  whilst  Rome 
itself  and  every  ancient  city  in  Europe  was  stormed, 
sacked,  burnt,  more  or  less  abandoned,  and  almost  blotted 
out  by  a  succession  of  invaders,  Constantinople  remained 


318  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

untouched,  impregnable,  never  decayed,  never  abandoned 
—  always  the  most  populous,  the  most  wealthy,  the  most 
cultivated,  the  most  artistic  city  in  Europe  —  always  the 
seat  of  a  great  empire,  the  refuge  of  those  who  sought 
peace  and  protection  for  their  culture  or  their  wealth,  a 
busy  centre  of  a  vast  commerce,  the  one  home  of  ancient 
art,  the  one  school  of  ancient  law  and  learning  left  unde- 
spoiled  and  undeserted.  From  the  eighth  century  to  the 
thirteenth  a  succession  of  travellers  have  described  its  size, 
wealth,  and  magnificence.1  In  the  middle  of  the  twelfth 
century,  the  Jew  Benjamin  of  Tudela,  coming  from  Spain 
to  Palestine,  declares  that  'these  riches  and  buildings  are 
equalled  nowhere  in  the  world';  'that  merchants  resort 
thither  from  all  parts  of  the  world.'  From  about  the 
eleventh  century  the  downfall  of  the  city  began.  It  was 
ruined  by  the  political  jealousy  of  the  Western  empire,  by 
the  religious  hostility  of  the  Roman  Church,  and  by  the 
commercial  rivalry  of  the  Italian  republics.  Placed  be- 
tween these  irreconcilable  enemies  on  the  west,  the  inces- 
sant attacks  of  the  Slavonic  races  on  the  north,  and  the 
aspiring  fanaticism  of  Musulman  races  from  the  east  and 
the  south,  the  Byzantine  empire  slowly  bled  to  death,  and 
its  capital  became,  for  some  three  centuries,  little  more 
than  a  besieged  fortress  —  filled  with  a  helpless  population 
and  vast  treasures  and  relics  it  could  no  longer  protect. 

But  whether  the  empire  was  in  glory  or  in  decay,  into 
whatever  race  it  passed,  and  whatever  was  the  official 
creed,  Constantinople  never  failed  to  attract  to  itself  what- 
ever of  genius  and  ambition  the  Eastern  empire  contained, 
nor  did  it  ever  cease,  nor  has  it  ceased,  to  be  a  great  mart 

1  Early  Travels  in  Palestine,  ed.  T.  Wright,  1868 ;  Krause,  Die  Byzanti- 
ncr  des  Mittelalters,  1869;  Heyd,  Levantehandel,  1879;  French  ed.  1885; 
Riant,  Exuvice  sacra  Constant.,  1877;  Hopf,  Chroniques  Greco-Romanes 
inedites,  1873. 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  319 

of  commerce,  and  clearing-house  of  all  that  the  East  and 
the  West  desired  to  exchange.  It  is  still  to  the  Greek 
priest,  as  it  is  to  the  Musulman  imam,  what  Rome  is  to  the 
Catholic.  And  to  the  Greek  from  Alexandria  to  New  York 
it  is  still  what  Rome  is  to  the  Italian,  and  what  Paris  is  to 
the  Frenchman.  In  a  sense,  it  is  almost  still  the  tradi- 
tional metropolis  of  the  Orthodox  Greek,  of  the  Armenian, 
and  almost  of  the  Levantine  Jew,  as  well  as  of  the  Moslem. 
Its  history  is  the  history  of  the  Balkan  peninsula,  for  its 
twenty  famous  sieges  have  been  the  turning-points  in  the 
rise  and  fall  of  the  empire.  The  inner  history  of  the 
thrones  of  the  East  has  been  uniformly  transacted  within 
those  walls  and  upon  the  buried  stones  and  fragments 
whereon  we  may  still  stand  to-day  and  ponder  on  the 
vicissitudes  of  fifteen  centuries  and  a  half. 


II.    Topographical  Conditions. 

A  large  part  of  this  strange  radiation  of  Eastern  history 
from  the  new  Eternal  City  is  unquestionably  due  to  its 
unique  local  conditions.  From  Herodotus  and  Polybius 
down  to  Gibbon  and  Freeman,  historians,  ancient  and 
modern,  have  expatiated  on  the  unrivalled  situation  of 
Byzantium  on  the  Bosphorus.  There  is  no  other  so  apt  to 
become  the  seat  of  a  great  city  on  the  habitable  globe. 
Standing  on  the  extreme  easternmost  point  of  the  Balkan 
peninsula,  it  is  within  easy  voyage  of  the  entire  coast-line 
of  Asia  Minor  on  its  northern,  western,  and  southern  faces. 
As  an  early  traveller  pointed  out,  Constantinople  '  is  a  city 
which  Nature  herself  has  designed  to  be  the  mistress  of 
the  world.  It  stands  in  Europe,  looks  upon  Asia,  and  is 
within  reach  by  sea  of  Egypt  and  the  Levant  on  the  south 
—  and  of  the  Black  Sea  and  its  European  and  Asiatic 


32O  THE   CITY   IN    HISTORY. 

shores  on  the  north.1 1  Something  of  the  kind  might  be 
said  for  such  cities  as  Corinth,  or  Thessalonica,  Smyrna, 
or  Athens ;  but  the  extraordinary  feature  of  Byzantium, 
which  confers  on  it  so  peculiar  a  power  of  defence  and 
attack  is  this  —  that  whilst  having  ample  and  secure  road- 
steads and  ports  all  round  it,  it  has  both  on  the  north  and 
the  south,  a  long,  narrow,  but  navigable  sea  channel,  of 
such  a  kind  that,  in  ancient  or  in  modern  warfare,  it  can  be 
made  impregnable  against  any  invading  fleet. 

Constantinople  was  thus  protected  by  two  marine  gates 
which  could  be  absolutely  closed  to  any  hostile  ship, 
whether  coming  from  the  Black  Sea  or  from  the  ^Egean, 
but  which  can  be  instantly  opened  to  its  own  or  any 
friendly  ship  coming  or  going  over  the  whole  area  of  the 
Euxine  or  the  Mediterranean.  Whilst  thus  impregnably 
defended  by  sea,  she  could  bar  invasion  by  land  by  her 
vast  rampart  running  from  sea  to  sea,  and  not  more  than 
four  miles  in  length.  And  at  a  distance  of  some  thirty 
miles  further  west,  a  second  wall,  twenty  feet  wide  and 
about  forty  miles  long,  shut  off  from  north  and  west  the 
main  peninsula  and  ran  from  the  Propontis  to  the  Euxine. 
Constantinople  in  ancient  times  thus  held  what,  with  an 
adequate  sea  and  land  force,  was  the  strongest  defensive 
position  in  Europe,  if  not  in  the  world.  For  by  sea  she  could 
bar  all  approach  from  east,  north,  or  south ;  whilst  on  the 
west,  the  only  landward  approach,  she  was  protected  by  a 
double  rampart,  placed  upon  a  double  peninsula,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  natural  bulwark  of  the  Balkan  mountains. 

To  this  incomparable  position  of  security  we  must  add 
that,  whilst  one  side  of  the  city  faces  an  inland  sea  of 
wonderful  beauty,  which  is  rather  a  lake  than  a  sea,  an- 
other side  of  the  city  looks  across  the  Bosphorus  to  Asia ; 
on  the  third  side  of  the  city  is  her  own  secure  port  of  the 

1  Busbecq's  Letters,  translated  by  Forster  and  Daniel,  1881,  vol.  i.  p.  123. 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  321 

Golden  Horn,  about  four  miles  long  and  more  than  half  a 
mile  wide.  Here  a  thousand  ships  can  ride  in  safety,  and 
the  channel  is  so  deep  that  in  places  the  biggest  vessels  can 
lie  beside  the  quays.  The  country  round  is  diversified  with 
hills,  valleys,  and  tableland,  broken  by  bays  and  gulfs,  and 
crowned  with  distant  mountains.  The  Propontis  and  its 
shores  teem  with  fish,  fruit,  vines,  woods,  and  marbles, 
whilst  in  the  far  horizon  the  snowy  folds  of  the  Bithynian 
Olympus  float  as  a  dim  but  radiant  vision  in  the  distance. 
The  extension  of  modern  artillery  has  reduced  and  almost 
destroyed  the  defensive  capacities  of  the  city  on  the  land- 
ward. But  from  the  time  of  Xerxes  until  the  present  cen- 
tury, its  power  of  defence  was  almost  perfect  so  long  as 
Byzantium  could  command  the  sea.  She  possessed  nearly 
all  the  advantages  of  an  island ;  but  of  an  island  placed 
in  a  sheltered  inland  sea,  an  island  from  which  rich  dis- 
tricts both  of  Asia  and  Europe  could  be  instantly  reached 
in  open  boats,  or  by  a  few  hours'  sail  in  any  kind  of  ship. 
A  city,  having  magnificent  harbours  and  roadsteads  and 
abundant  waterways  in  every  direction,  had  all  the  peculiar 
features  which  have  gone  to  create  the  power  of  Syracuse, 
Alexandria,  Venice,  Amsterdam,  London,  or  New  York. 
But  Byzantium  had  this  additional  security  —  that,  with 
all  the  facilities  of  an  island,  she  could  close  her  marine 
gates  against  any  hostile  fleet  and  forbid  their  approach 
within  sight.  Tyre,  Carthage,  Athens,  Syracuse,  Alexan- 
dria—  we  may  say  all  famous  seaports  throughout  the 
Mediterranean  (except  Venice,  which  lay  safe  in  her 
lagoons),  were  exposed  to  a  hostile  fleet ;  and  all  of  them 
have  been  more  than  once  invested  by  invaders  from  the 
sea.  But  so  long  as  Byzantium  had  forces  enough  at  sea 
to  close  the  gate  of  the  Bosphorus  and  also  that  of  the 
Hellespont,  she  was  unassailable  by  any  hostile  fleet. 
And  so  long  as  she  had  forces  enough  on  land  to  man 

X 


322  THE    CITY   IN    HISTORY. 

the  long  wall  across  the  great  peninsula,  and  also  to  de- 
fend her  great  inner  fortifications  across  the  smaller  penin- 
sula, she  was  impregnable  to  any  invading  army. 

It  would  be  unwise  in  a  civilian  to  express  any  opinion 
of  his  own  on  the  very  important  problem  of  the  degree 
in  which  modern  appliances  of  war  have  deprived  Constan- 
tinople of  her  peculiar  powers  of  defence.  We  are  told 
that,  so  far  as  the  closing  of  the  Bosphorus  and  the  Helles- 
pont extend,  the  resources  of  the  artillerist  and  the  sub- 
marine engineer  have  greatly  increased  their  defensive 
capacity.  Constantinople  is,  of  course,  no  longer  safe 
from  an  enemy  posted  on  the  heights,  either  above  Pera, 
Scutari,  or  Eyub ;  and  obviously  her  ancient  walls  and  for- 
tification are  useless.  But  with  first-class  forts  to  protect 
both  Scutari  and  Pera,  and  also  the  heights  to  the  west  of 
the  city  —  which  together  might  require  some  four  com- 
plete corps  cT armies  —  and  with  a  first-class  fleet  in  the 
Marmora,  Constantinople  would,  even  to-day,  be  far  stronger 
for  defence  than  any  existing  capital  in  Europe,  perhaps 
stronger  than  any  great  city  in  the  world. 

The  peculiar  position  of  Byzantium  was  alike  fitted  for 
offence  or  for  defence.  It  was  essentially  a  maritime  posi- 
tion, the  full  resources  of  which  could  only  be  used  by  a 
power  strong  at  sea.  If  it  issued  northwards,  through  its 
gate  on  the  Bosphorus,  it  could  send  a  fleet  to  any  point 
of  the  Black  Sea — a  vast  expanse  of  172,000  square  miles, 
having  one  of  the  greatest  drainage  areas  in  the  world. 
Thus,  in  a  few  days,  armies  and  munitions  could  be  carried 
to  the  mouths  either  of  the  Danube,  the  Dnieper,  or  the 
Don,  to  the  shores  of  the  Crimea,  or  else  eastward  to  the 
foot  of  the  Caucasus,  or  to  any  point  on  the  north  coast 
of  Asia  Minor.  If  it  issued  south  through  the  Propontis 
and  the  Hellespont,  a  few  days  would  carry  its  armies  to 
the  teeming  shores  of  Bithynia,  or  to  the  rich  coasts  and 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  323 

islands  of  the  ^Egean  Sea,  or  to  Greece,  or  to  any  point  on 
the  western  or  the  southern  coast  of  Asia  Minor.  And  a 
few  days  more  would  bring  its  fleets  to  the  coast  of  Syria, 
or  of  Egypt,  or  to  Italy,  Spain,  Africa,  and  the  Western 
Mediterranean.  Thus,  the  largest  army  could  be  safely 
transported  in  a  few  days,  so  as  to  descend  at  will  upon 
the  vast  plains  of  Southern  Russia,  or  into  the  heart  of 
Central  Asia,  within  a  short  march  of  the  head  waters  of 
the  Euphrates  —  or  they  might  descend  southwards  to  the 
gates  of  Syria,  near  Issus,  or  else  to  the  mouths  of  the  Nile, 
or  to  the  islands  and  bays  of  Greece  or  Italy. 

And  these  wide  alternatives  in  objective  point  could  be 
kept  for  ultimate  decision  unknown  to  an  enemy  up  to  the 
last  moment.  When  the  great  Heraclius,  in  622,  opened 
his  memorable  war  with  Chosroes,  which  ended  in  the  ruin 
of  the  Persian  dynasty,  no  man  in  either  host  knew  till  the 
hour  of  his  sailing  whether  the  Byzantine  hero  intended 
to  descend  upon  Armenia  by  the  Euxine,  or  upon  Syria  by 
the  Gulf  of  Issus.  And  until  they  issued  from  the  Helles- 
pont into  the  yEgean,  the  Emperor's  army  and  fleet  were 
absolutely  protected  not  only  from  molestation,  but  even 
from  observation.  To  a  power  which  commanded  the  sea 
and  had  ample  supplies  of  troopships,  Constantinople  com- 
bined the  maximum  power  of  defence  with  the  maximum 
range  of  attack.  And  this  extraordinary  combination  she 
will  retain  in  the  future  in  competent  hands. 

That  wonderfully  rapid  and  mobile  force,  which  an  emi- 
nent American  expert  has  named  the  '  Sea  Power,'  the 
power  discovered  by  Cromwell  and  Blake,  of  which  Eng- 
land is  still  the  great  example  and  mistress,  was  placed  by 
the  founders  of  Byzantium  in  that  spot  of  earth  which,  at 
any  rate  in  its  anciently-peopled  districts,  combined  the 
greatest  resources.  Byzantium,  from  the  days  of  the  Per- 
sian and  the  Peloponnesian  wars,  had  always  been  a  prize 


324  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

to  be  coveted  by  a  naval  power.  From  the  time  of  Con- 
stantine  down  to  the  Crusades,  or  for  nearly  eight  cen- 
turies, the  rulers  of  Constantinople  could  usually  command 
large  and  well-manned  fleets.  And  this  was  enough  to 
account  for  her  imperial  place  in  history.  As  an  imperial 
city  she  must  rise,  decline,  or  fall,  by  her  naval  strength. 
She  fell  before  the  Crusaders  in  a  naval  attack ;  and  she 
was  crippled  to  a  great  extent  by  the  naval  attack  of 
Mohammed  the  Conqueror.  During  the  zenith  of  the 
Moslem  Conquest,  she  was  great  by  sea.  Her  decline  in 
this  century  has  been  far  greater  on  sea  than  on  land. 
When  her  fleet  was  shattered  at  Sinope,  in  1853,  the  end 
was  not  far  off.  And  when  to-day  we  see  in  the  Golden 
Horn  the  hulls  of  her  ironclads  moored  motionless,  and 
they  say,  unable  to  move,  men  know  that  Stamboul  is  no 
longer  the  queen  of  the  Levant. 

As  a  maritime  city,  also,  Constantinople  presents  this 
striking  problem.  For  fifteen  centuries,  with  moderate 
intervals,  this  city  of  the  Bosphorus  and  the  Propontis 
has  held  imperial  rule.  No  other  seaport  city,  either  in 
the  ancient  or  in  the  modern  world,  has  ever  maintained 
an  empire  for  a  period  approaching  to  this  in  length. 
Tyre,  Carthage,  Athens,  Alexandria,  Venice,  Genoa,  Am- 
sterdam, have  held  proud  dependencies  by  their  fleets  for  a 
space,  but  for  rarely  more  than  a  few  generations  or  cen- 
turies. The  supremacy  of  the  seas,  of  which  Englishmen 
boast,  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  had  more  than  two  cen- 
turies of  trial.  The  city  of  the  Bosphorus  has  been  tried 
by  fifteen  centuries  of  fierce  rivalry  and  obstinate  war ; 
and  for  long  periods  together  she  saw  powerful  enemies 
permanently  encamped  almost  within  sight  of  her  towers. 
Yet  she  still  commands  the  gates  of  the  Euxine  and  the 
Hellespont,  just  as  Herodotus  and  Polybius  tell  us  that  she 
did  two  thousand  years  ago.  Nor  can  any  man  who  has 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  325 

studied  that  marvellous  peninsula  fail  to  see  that,  so  soon 
as  Constantinople  again  falls  into  the  hands  of  a  great 
naval  power,  she  must  recover  her  paramount  control 
over  the  whole  shore  of  South-Eastern  Europe  and  North- 
Western  Asia. 

Herodotus  tells  us  how  Darius'  general,  in  the  sixth  cen- 
tury B.C.,  judged  its  position,  in  the  well-known  saying  that 
Chalcedon,  the  city  on  the  Asiatic  shore  opposite,  must 
have  been  founded  by  blind  men,  for  they  overlooked  the 
superior  situation  on  which  Byzantium  was  soon  after 
placed.  Thucydides  records  the  part  played  by  the  city 
in  the  Peloponnesian  war ;  and  Polybius,  the  scientific 
historian  of  the  second  century  B.C.,  describes  it  with  sin- 
gular insight.  '  Of  all  cities  in  the  world,'  he  says,  '  it  is 
the  most  happy  in  its  position  on  the  sea ;  being  not  only 
secure  on  that  side  from  all  enemies,  but  possessed  of  the 
means  of  obtaining  every  kind  of  necessaries  in  the  great- 
est plenty.'  And  he  enlarges  on  its  extraordinary  com- 
mand of  the  commercial  route  from  the  Euxine  to  the 
Mediterranean.  He  explains  the  disadvantages  of  its  posi- 
tion on  the  land  side,  and  the  reasons  which  hindered 
Byzantium  from  becoming  a  commanding  city  in  Greece. 
The  main  reason  was  the  proximity  of  the  barbarous  and 
irrepressible  Thracians ;  for  the  old  Byzantium  was  never 
strong  enough  to  wall  in  and  defend  the  whole  peninsula 
by  the  wall  of  Anastasius,  nor  was  it  rich  enough  to  main- 
tain such  an  army  as  would  overawe  the  tribes  of  the 
Balkan. 

No  doubt  the  founders  of  Chalcedon  on  the  Asian  side 
were  not  blind,  but  they  feared  the  Thracians  of  the  Euro- 
pean side,  and  were  not  able  to  dispossess  the  tribe  settled 
on  the  peninsula.  But  a  problem  arises.  Why,  if  the  situ- 
ation of  Byzantium  were  so  predominant,  did  it  remain  for 
a  thousand  years  a  second-class  commercial  city  of  Greece  ? 


326  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

and  then,  why,  in  the  fourth  century,  did  it  become  the 
natural  capital  of  Eastern  Europe  ?  The  answer  is  plain. 
The  magnificent  maritime  position  of  Byzantium  was  neu- 
tralised so  long  as  the  Balkan  peninsula  and  the  valley  of 
the  Danube  was  filled  with  barbarous  nomads.  The  great 
wars  of  Trajan  and  his  successors,  in  the  first  and  second 
centuries,  for  the  first  time  brought  the  whole  basin  of  the 
Danube  into  the  limits  of  the  empire.  Thus,  when  Con- 
stantinople was  founded,  it  was  secure  by  land  as  well  as 
by  sea.  When,  in  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries,  Italy, 
Spain,  Gaul,  and  Africa  were  swept  by  a  succession  of 
Northern  invaders,  the  Empire  had  command  of  great 
armies,  ample  to  man  the  vast  system  of  fortifications 
across  her  double  peninsula.  And  thus  she  resisted  the 
torrent  which  submerged  and  devastated  Western  Europe. 

The  part  played  by  Byzantium  down  to  the  time  of  Con- 
stantine  was  subordinate,  but  significant.  It  is  frequently 
mentioned  by  almost  all  the  ancient  historians ;  and  of 
famous  chiefs  who  were  concerned  with  it  we  have  Pau- 
sanias  the  victor  of  Plataea,  Cimon,  the  son  of  Miltiades, 
Alcibiades,  Epaminondas,  Demosthenes,  Philip  of  Mace- 
don,  many  Roman  generals,  the  Emperors  Claudius,  Ves- 
pasian, Severus,  Licinius,  and  Constantine.  It  is  a  strange 
accident  that  the  city  of  the  later  empire  and  of  the  Sul- 
tans was  the  city  wherein  Pausanias,  the  victor  of  Pla- 
taea, was  seized  with  the  mania  for  assuming  an  Oriental 
tyranny,  and  that  it  was  where  the  Seraglio  now  stands 
that  the  infatuated  king  perpetrated  the  horrid  deed  of  lust 
and  blood,  which  our  poet  introduces  in  his  Manfred.  Is 
there  something  in  the  air  of  that  hill  where  we  now  stare 
at  the  '  Sublime  Porte,'  which  fires  the  blood  of  tyrants  to 
savage  and  mysterious  crime  ? 

The  removal  of  the  imperial  capital  from  Rome  to  Byzan- 
tium was  one  of  the  most  decisive  acts  on  record  —  a 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY 

signal  monument  of  foresight,  genius,  and  will.  Madrid, 
St.  Petersburg,  Berlin,  are  also  capital  cities  created  by  the 
act  of  a  powerful  ruler.  But  none  of  these  foundations  can 
compare  in  scale  and  in  importance  with  the  tremendous 
task  of  moving  the  seat  of  empire  a  thousand  miles  to  the 
East,  from  the  centre  of  Italy  to  the  coast  of  Asia,  from  a 
Latin  to  a  Greek  city,  from  a  pagan  to  a  Christian  popu- 
lation. The  motives  which  impelled  Constantine  to  this 
momentous  step  were  doubtless  complex.  Since  the  time 
of  Trajan,  Rome  had  not  been  the  constant  residence  of 
the  Emperors,  except  of  Antoninus  Pius,  nor  the  regular 
seat  of  government.  Since  the  time  of  Diocletian,  Rome 
had  been  abandoned  as  the  official  centre  of  the  empire. 
Many  places  east  of  it  had  been  tried  ;  and  Constantine, 
when  resolved  on  the  great  change,  seriously  contemplated 
two,  if  not  three,  other  sites.  It  had  long  been  agreed  that 
the  imperial  seat  must  be  transferred  towards  the  East ; 
and  there  was  an  instinctive  sense  that  the  valley  of  the 
Tiber  was  no  longer  safe  from  the  incessant  onward  march 
of  the  Teutonic  nations  in  arms. 

The  tendency  was  to  get  somewhere  south  of  the  Dan- 
ube, and  within  reach  of  Asia  Minor  and  the  Euphrates. 
The  greater  chiefs  had  all  felt  that  the  empire  must  be 
recast,  both  politically  and  spiritually.  By  the  fourth  cen- 
tury it  was  clear  that  the  empire  must  break  with  the 
rooted  prejudices  that  surrounded  the  Senate  of  Rome 
and  the  gods  of  the  Capitol.  And  Constantine,  the  half- 
conscious  and  half-convinced  agent  of  the  great  change  — 
the  change  from  the  ancient  world  to  the  modern  world, 
from  polytheism  to  Christianity — saw  in  the  Church  and 
Bishop  of  Rome  a  power  which  would  never  be  his  creat- 
ure. Dante  tells  us  that  '  Caesar  became  a  Greek  in  order 
to  give  place  to  the  Roman  pastor.'  There  is  much  in 
this  :  but  it  is  not  the  whole  truth,  for  Caesar  might  have 


328  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

become  a  Spaniard,  or  a  Gaul,  or  an  Illyrian.  Dante 
might  have  added  that  Caesar  became  an  Oriental,  in  order 
to  give  place  to  the  Goth.  Constantinople  from  the  first 
was  a  Christian  city,  with  an  orthodox  Church ;  but  it  was 
a  Church  that  was,  from  the  first,  a  department  of  the 
State. 

The  topography,  apart  from  the  geography  of  Constan- 
tinople, may  demand  some  words ;  for  the  history  of  the 
city  from  Constantine  to  Abdul  Hamid  is  based  on  its 
physical  characters.  We  cannot  doubt  that  the  many 
delights  of  this  spot,  the  varied  resources  of  the  surround- 
ing country,  the  combination  of  sea,  bay,  mountain,  valley, 
terrace,  and  garden,  as  these  rise  one  beyond  the  other, 
have  made  Constantinople  for  fifteen  centuries  the  resi- 
dence of  Emperors  and  Caliphs,  the  dream  and  pride  of 
nations,  and  the  crown  of  imperial  ambition. 

Those  who  approach  Constantinople  from  Greece,  as  all 
men  should,  have  sailed  through  that  long  panorama  of 
island,  mountain,  and  headland  which  the  yEgean  Sea 
presents,  past  '  Troy  town '  and  the  unknown  home  of  its 
minstrel ;  and  every  rock  recalls  some  tale  or  poem  for 
the  three  thousand  years  since  European  thought  and  arts 
rose  into  being  across  those  waters.  The  Hellespont  has 
been  passed  with  its  legends  and  histories,  and  the  sea  of 
Marmora  with  its  islands  of  marble,  its  rich  shores  and 
distant  ranges  of  mountain  —  and  as  the  morning  sun 
touches  the  crescents  on  her  domes,  the  eternal  city  of 
New  Rome  bursts  into  view,  looking  on  the  East  and  the 
South  across  the  blue  waters  of  Propontis  and  Bosphorus, 
with  her  seven  hills  rising  towards  Europe  one  behind  the 
other,  each  crowned  with  cupola  and  minaret,  amidst  ar- 
caded  terraces,  and  groves  of  acacia,  myrtle,  and  cypress. 

This  glorious  vision,  if  not  the  most  beautiful,  is  the 
most  varied  and  fascinating  of  its  kind  in  Europe.  Some 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  329 

prefer  the  bay  of  Naples,  or  the  bay  of  Salamis,  or  of 
Genoa ;  but  neither  Naples,  nor  Athens,  nor  Rome,  nor 
Genoa,  nor  Venice,  have,  as  cities,  anything  of  the  extent, 
variety,  and  complexity  of  Constantinople,  if  we  include 
its  four  or  five  suburbs,  its  magnificent  sea  landscape,  its 
bays,  islands,  and  mountains,  in  the  distance.  For  Con- 
stantinople does  not  stand  upon  an  open  sea  like  Naples, 
or  Genoa,  but  on  a  great  marine  lake  with  its  shores,  vine- 
clad  hills,  headlands,  and  pearly  mountain  ranges  in  the 
far  horizon.  Like  Athens  or  Venice,  it  has  a  seaport 
without  an  open  sea  outside.  And  as  a  city,  it  is  vastly 
more  grand  and  varied  than  Venice,  Athens,  Florence,  or 
Edinburgh.  Hence,  Constantinople  combines  such  sea 
views  as  we  find  round  the  Western  islands  of  Scotland 
or  of  Greece,  with  the  summer  sky  and  vegetation  of  Italy, 
and  the  mountain  ranges  which  fill  the  horizon  from  the 
plains  of  Lombardy. 

Was  it  more  beautiful  in  the  age  of  the  Empire  than 
it  is  to-day  ?  Perhaps  from  a  distance,  from  the  sea,  the 
Stamboul  of  to-day  is  a  far  more  striking  sight  than  the 
Byzantium  of  the  Caesars.  The  minarets,  an  Eastern  and 
Moslem  feature,  are  the  distinctive  mark  of  the  modern  city, 
and  do  much  to  break  the  monotony  of  the  Byzantine 
cupolas.  There  are  four  or  five  mosques  which  repeat  and 
rival  the  church  of  the  Holy  Wisdom,  and  some  of  them 
have  nobler  sites.  Nor  were  the  towers  and  battlements 
of  ancient  architecture  to  be  compared  in  beauty  and  in 
scale  with  those  of  Mediaeval  and  Moslem  builders.  But 
the  city,  as  seen  within,  in  the  Isaurian  and  Basilian  dynas- 
ties, we  may  assume  in  the  five  centuries  which  separate 
Justinian  from  the  First  Crusade,  must  have  greatly  sur- 
passed in  noble  art,  if  not  in  pictorial  effect,  the  Ottoman 
city  that  we  see.  The  enormous  palace  and  hippodrome, 
the  basilicas,  churches,  halls,  and  porticoes,  with  their 


33O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

profusion  of  marble,  mosaic,  bronzes,  and  paintings,  their 
colossal  figures,  obelisks,  and  columns,  the  choicest  relics 
of  Greek  sculpture,  the  memorial  statues,  baths,  theatres, 
and  forums  —  must  have  far  surpassed  the  decaying  rem- 
nant of  Stamboul  which  so  often  disenchants  the  traveller 
when  he  disembarks  from  the  Golden  Horn. 


III.    Antiquities  of  Constantinople. 

Constantine  created  his  New  Rome  in  330,  as  never  ruler 
before  or  since  created  a  city.  It  was  made  a  mighty  and 
resplendent  capital  within  a  single  decade.  Italy,  Greece, 
Asia  Minor,  Syria,  Egypt,  Mauritania,  were  despoiled  of 
their  treasures  to  adorn  the  new  metropolis.  Constantine 
built  churches,  theatres,  forums,  baths,  porticoes,  palaces, 
monuments,  and  aqueducts.  He  built,  adorned,  and  peo- 
pled a  great  capital  all  at  a  stroke,  and  made  it,  after 
Rome  and  Athens,  the  most  splendid  city  of  the  ancient 
world.  Two  centuries  later,  Justinian  became  the  second 
founder  of  the  city.  And  from  Constantine  down  to  the 
capture  by  the  Crusaders,  for  nearly  nine  centuries,  a  suc- 
cession of  Emperors  continued  to  raise  great  sacred  and 
lay  buildings.  Of  the  city  before  Constantine  little  re- 
mains above  the  ground,  except  some  sculptures  in  the 
museum,  and  foundations  of  some  walls,  which  Dr.  Pas- 
pates  believes  that  he  can  trace.  Of  Constantine  and  his 
immediate  successors  there  remain  parts  of  the  hippo- 
drome, of  walls,  aqueducts,  cisterns,  and  forums,  some 
columns  and  monuments.  Of  the  Emperors  from  Theo- 
dosius  to  the  Crusades,  we  still  have,  little  injured,  the 
grand  church  of  Sophia,  some  twenty  churches  much  al- 
tered and  mostly  late  in  date,  the  foundations  of  palaces, 
and  one  still  standing  in  ruins,  and  lastly  the  twelve  miles 
of  walls  with  their  gates  and  towers.  The  museums  con- 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  331 

tain  sarcophagi,  statues,  inscriptions  of  the  Roman  age. 
But  we  can  hardly  doubt  that  an  immense  body  of  Byzan- 
tine relics  and  buildings  still  lie  buried  some  ten  or  twenty 
feet  below  the  ground  whereon  stand  to-day  the  serails, 
khans,  mosques,  and  houses  of  Stamboul,  a  soil  which  the 
Ottoman  is  loth  to  disturb.  When  the  day  comes  that 
such  scientific  excavations  are  possible  as  have  been  made 
in  the  Forum  and  the  Palatine  at  Rome,  we  may  yet  look 
to  unveil  many  monuments  of  rare  historical  interest,  and, 
it  might  be,  a  few  of  high  artistic  value.  As  yet,  the  cut- 
tings for  the  railway  have  given  almost  the  only  oppor- 
tunity that  antiquarians  have  had  of  investigating  below 
the  surface  of  the  actual  city,  which  stands  upon  a  deep 
stratum  of  debris. 

One  monument,  eight  centuries  older  than  Constan- 
tine  himself,  has  been  recently  disinterred,  and  curiously 
enough  by  English  hands.  It  is  one  of  the  oldest,  most 
historic,  most  venerable  relics  of  the  ancient  world.  The 
Serpent  Column  of  bronze  from  Delphi,  set  up  by  the 
Greeks  as  base  for  the  golden  tripod  to  commemorate 
the  final  defeat  of  Xerxes,  an  object  of  pilgrimage  for 
Greeks  for  eight  centuries,  stands  still  in  the  spot  where  a 
Roman  emperor  placed  it  in  the  hippodrome ;  and  after 
2373  years,  it  still  bears  witness  to  the  first  great  victory 
of  the  West  over  the  East.  When  the  East  triumphed 
over  the  West  nearly  2000  years  later,  the  conqueror  left 
this  secular  monument  on  its  base ;  and  during  the  Cri- 
mean war  English  soldiers  dug  it  out  of  the  surrounding 
debris  and  revealed  the  rude  inscription  of  the  thirty  con- 
federate states  exactly  as  Herodotus  and  Pausanias  record. 
With  the  bronze  Wolf  of  the  Capitol,  it  may  count  as  the 
most  precious  metal  relic  which  remains  from  the  ancient 
world ;  for  the  Crusaders  melted  down  into  pence  every 
piece  of  bronze  statuary  they  could  seize,  and  carried  off 


332  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

to  St.  Mark's,  at  Venice,  the  four  horses  that  bear  the 
name  of  Lysippus. 

Constantinople  is  rich,  not  in  works  of  art,  for  those  of 
the  city  have  been  wantonly  destroyed,  but  in  historic 
sites,  which  appeal  to  the  scholar  rather  than  to  the  public  ; 
but  in  so  singular  a  conformation  of  sea  and  land,  the  sites 
can  often  be  fixed  with  some  precision.  We  may  still  note 
the  spot  where  daring  pioneers  from  Megara  set  up  their 
Acropolis  a  century  and  a  half  before  the  battle  of  Mara- 
thon ;  we  can  trace  the  original  harbour,  the  position  of 
some  temples,  and  the  line  of  the  walls.  We  can  stand 
beside  the  burial-place  of  a  long  line  of  emperors,  and 
trace  the  plan  of  the  forums,  palaces,  and  hippodrome 
where  so  vast  a  succession  of  stirring  scenes  took  place, 
some  of  the  earlier  monuments  and  churches,  the  hall 
where  Justinian  promulgated  the  Corpus  Juris  which  has 
served  the  greater  part  of  Europe  for  thirteen  centuries 
and  a  half.  And,  above  all,  we  have  the  great  Church  in 
something  like  its  original  glory,  less  injured  by  time  and 
man  than  almost  any  remaining  mediaeval  cathedral. 

The  Church  of  S.  Sophia  is,  next  to  the  Pantheon  at 
Rome,  the  most  central  and  historic  edifice  still  standing 
erect.  It  is  now  in  its  fourteenth  century  of  continuous 
and  unbroken  use  ;  and  during  the  whole  of  that  vast 
epoch,  it  has  never  ceased  to  be  the  imperial  fane  of  the 
Eastern  world,  nor  has  it  ever,  as  the  Pantheon,  been 
desolate  and  despoiled.  Its  influence  over  Eastern  archi- 
tecture has  been  as  wide  as  that  of  the  Pantheon  over 
Western  architecture,  and  it  has  been  far  more  continuous. 
It  was  one  of  the  most  original,  daring,  and  triumphant 
conceptions  in  the  whole  record  of  human  building ;  and 
Mr.  Fergusson  declares  it  to  be  internally  'the  most  per- 
fect and  beautiful  church  ever  yet  erected  by  any  Chris- 
tian people.'  Its  interior  is  certainly  the  most  harmonious, 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  333 

most  complete,  and  least  faulty  of  all  the  great  domed  and 
round-arched  temples.  It  unites  sublimity  of  construction 
with  grace  of  detail,  splendour  of  decoration  with  inde- 
structible material.  It  avoids  the  conspicuous  faults  of 
the  great  temples  of  Rome  and  of  Florence,  whilst  it  is  far 
richer  in  decorative  effect  within  than  our  own  St.  Paul's 
or  the  Pantheon  of  Paris.  Its  glorious  vesture  of  marble, 
mosaic,  carving,  and  cast  metal  is  unsurpassed  by  the 
richest  of  the  Gothic  cathedrals,  and  is  far  more  enduring. 
Though  twice  as  old  as  Westminster  Abbey,  it  has  suffered 
less  dilapidation,  and  will  long  outlast  it.  Its  constructive 
mass  and  its  internal  ornamentation  far  exceed  in  solidity 
the  slender  shafts,  the  paintings,  and  the  stained  glass  of 
the  Gothic  churches.  In  this  masterly  type  the  mind  is 
aroused  by  the  infinite  subtlety  of  the  construction,  and 
the  eye  is  delighted  with  the  inexhaustible  harmonies  of  a 
superb  design  worked  out  in  most  gorgeous  materials, 

For  Justinian  and  his  successors  ransacked  the  empire 
to  find  the  most  precious  materials  for  the  'Great  Church.' 
The  interior  is  still  one  vast  pile  of  marble,  porphyry,  and 
polished  granite,  white  marbles  with  rosy  streaks,  green 
marbles,  blue  and  black,  starred  or  veined  with  white. 
The  pagan  temples  were  stripped  of  their  columns  and 
capitals  ;  monoliths  and  colossal  slabs  were  transported 
from  Rome,  and  from  the  Nile,  from  Syria,  Asia  Minor, 
and  Greece,  so  that,  with  the  Pantheon  at  Rome,  this  is 
the  one  example  of  a  grand  structure  of  ancient  art  which 
still  remains  unruined.  The  gilded  portals,  the  jewels, 
pearls,  and  gold  of  the  altar,  the  choir  adornment  of  cedar, 
amber,  ivory,  and  silver,  have  been  long  destroyed  by  the 
greedy  soldiers  of  the  Cross  ;  and  the  mosaics  above  with 
seraphim,  apostles,  prophets,  and  Christ  in  glory  have  been 
covered  up,  but  not  destroyed,  by  the  fierce  soldiers  of 
Mahomet. 


334  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

It  is  a  fact,  almost  without  parallel  in  the  history  of 
religion,  that  the  Musulman  conquerors  adopted  the  Chris- 
tian cathedral  as  their  own  fane,  without  injuring  it,  with 
very  little  alteration  within,  and  even  without  changing  its 
name.  The  Greeks  did  not  adopt  the  form  of  Egyptian  or 
Syrian  temples ;  Christians  took  for  the  model  of  their 
churches  the  law-courts,  but  not  the  temples  of  Polythe- 
ism ;  Protestants  have  never  found  a  practical  use  for  the 
cruciform  churches  of  Catholicism.  But  Islam  accepted 
the  Holy  Wisdom  as  the  type  of  its  mosque ;  partially 
concealed  the  Christian  emblems  and  sacred  mosaics, 
added  without  some  courts  and  the  four  beautiful  mina- 
rets, but  made  no  structural  change  within.  And  thus 
the  oldest  cathedral  in  Christendom  is  the  type  of  a  thou- 
sand mosques  ;  and  the  figures  of  Christ  and  his  saints, 
that  a  Roman  emperor  set  up  in  his  imperial  dome,  look 
down  to-day  after  fifteen  centuries  on  the  Westminster 
Abbey  of  the  Ottoman  Caliphs.  What  a  dazzling  pano- 
rama of  stirring,  pathetic,  and  terrific  scenes  press  on  the 
mind  of  the  student  of  Byzantine  history  as  he  recalls  all 
which  that  vast  fane  has  witnessed  in  the  thousand  years 
that  separate  the  age  of  Justinian  from  that  of  Suleiman 
the  Magnificent  :  from  the  day  when  the  great  emperor 
cried  out,  '  I  have  surpassed  thee,  O  Solomon  !  '  to  the 
days  when  Ottoman  conquerors  gave  thanks  for  a  hundred 
victories  over  the  Cross.  Has  any  building  in  the  world 

been  witness  to  so  vast  a  series  of  memorable  events  ? 

/ 

In  historic  memories,  the  walls  of  Constantinople  can 
compare  with  her  great  Church ;  for  the  ruined  walls  are 
still  the  most  colossal  and  pathetic  relics  of  the  ancient 
world  that  remain  in  Europe.  Except  the  walls  round 
Rome,  there  is  no  scene  in  Europe  so  strange,,  so  desolate, 
and  mantled  with  such  annals  of  battle,  crime,  despair,  and 
heroism.  Though  the  sea  walls  have  been  partly  removed 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  335 

and  much  injured  by  man,  the  vast  rampart  on  the  west 
which  stretches  from  Blachernae  on  the  Golden  Horn  to 
the  Seven  Towers  on  the  Marmora,  a  distance  of  nearly 
four  miles,  is  still,  but  for  natural  decay  and  disturbance, 
in  the  state  in  which  it  was  left  by  Sultan  Mohammed  the 
Conqueror  in  the  fifteenth  century.  It  was  then  more 
than  a  thousand  years  old  ;  and  during  the  whole  of 
that  period  it  had  been  increased,  repaired,  strengthened, 
doubled,  and  tripled.  It  is  still  a  museum  or  vast  cata- 
comb of  Byzantine  history.  More  fortunate  than  the 
walls  of  Rome  and  other  ancient  cities,  the  western  walls 
of  Constantinople  have  hardly  been  touched  by  the  hand  of 
man' since  the  Turks  entered.  This  complicated  scheme 
of  circumvallation,  far  stronger  than  the^walls  of  Rome  or 
of  any  other  ancient  or  mediaeval  city,  made  an  impene- 
trable barrier,  whilst  adequately  manned  and  defended, 
down  to  the  invention  of  the  heavy  cannon.  We  can  still 
trace  the  plan  and  form  of  the  triple  line  of  wall,  of  the 
moat,  of  the  two  causeways,  of  the  fourteen  gates,  and 
the  one  hundred  and  ninety-four  towers,  and  the  ruined 
palace  of  the  later  emperors. 

Here  and  there  the  massive  towers  are  riven  and  totter- 
ing, torn  by  cannon,  earthquake,  and  centuries  of  neglect 
and  decay.  The  shrunken  city  of  Stamboul  does  not  now 
touch  them,  and  no  populous  suburbs  have  grown  round 
them.  Cemeteries  with  cypress  and  tombstones,  the  cupola 
of  a  small  oratory,  or  the  roof  of  a  hospital,  alone  break  the 
view.  But  the  crumbling  walls  and  towers  stand  in  soli- 
tude amidst  orchards  and  gardens,  and  nothing  disturbs 
the  student  who  deciphers  inscriptions  set  up  by  Constan- 
tines,  Leos,  Basils,  Comneni,  and  Palaeologi,  and  here  and 
there  a  Roman  eagle  and  a  Greek  cross.1  The  Golden 

1  They  have  been  collected  and  explained  by  Dr.  Paspates  in  his  Rvfavnva.1 


336  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

Gate,  with  its  two  marble  towers,  prisons,  palace  halls,  the 
famous  Castle  of  Blachernas  and  the  Seven  Towers,  carry 
us  through  a  thousand  years  of  history — but  most  of  all 
we  linger  near  the  breach  hard  by  the  gate  of  S.  Romanus, 
where  the  last  Constantine  met  the  Ottoman  Mohammed  in 
deadly  grip,  redeeming  by  his  death  four  centuries  of  feeble- 
ness in  his  ancestors,  as  he  fell  amidst  heaps  of  slain  :  — 

'  With  his  face  up  to  Heaven,  in  that  red  monument 
Which  his  good  sword  had  digg'd.' 

Of  all  cities  of  the  world  Constantinople  is  memorable 
for  its  sieges,  the  most  numerous  and  the  most  momentous 
in  the  records  of  history.  For  long  centuries  together  the 
city  was  a  besieged  fortress,  and  during  nearly  eight  cen- 
turies her  vast  fortifications  resisted  the  efforts  of  all 
foreign  invaders.  Goths,  Huns,  Avars,  Slaves,  Persians, 
Saracens,  Bulgarians,  Hungarians,  Turks,  and  Russians 
have  continually  assailed  and  menaced  them  in  vain. 
Great  conquerors,  such  as  Zabergan,  Chosroes,  Muaviah, 
Omar,  Moslemah,  Crumn,  Haroun-al-Raschid,  Bayazid, 
failed  to  shake  them.  For  ten  years  a  Persian  camp 
stood  in  arms  at  Chalcedon  across  the  Bosphorus  ;  for 
years  the  Saracens  assailed  it  year  by  year  in  vain  (674- 
677,  and  717-718).  These  sieges  were  not  mere  expedi- 
tions against  a  single  stronghold  ;  they  involved  the  fate  of 
an  empire  and  a  religion.  Had  pagans,  fire- worshippers 
or  Musulmans,  nomad  hordes  or  devastating  Mongols  suc- 
ceeded in  piercing  these  walls  before  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, the  course  of  civilisation  would  have  been  seriously 
changed.  For  a  thousand  years  these  crumbling  ram- 
parts, which  to-day  we  see  in  such  pathetic  desolation, 
were  the  bulwark  of  European  civilisation,  of  the  tradi- 
tions of  Rome,  of  the  Christendom  of  the  East,  and  in 
no  small  degree  of  learning,  arts,  and  commerce,  until  the 
great  mediaeval  reconstruction  was  ready  to  appear. 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  337 

It  is  a  striking  proof  of  the  enormous  persistency  of 
Byzantine  history  that  the  Bulgarians  and  Russians,  both 
of  whom  are  still  pressing  eagerly  onwards  with  longing 
eyes  set  on  the  city  of  the  Bosphorus,  have  been  from 
time  to  time  renewing  these  attacks  for  more  than  a  thou- 
sand years.  It  was  in  813  that  Crumn,  the  great  king  of 
the  Bulgarians,  opened  his  terrible  onslaught ;  and  it  was 
nearly  two  centuries  later  that  Basil,  '  the  slayer  of  the 
Bulgarians,'  began  his  triumphant  campaign  against  that 
secular  foe.  The  first  siege  of  Constantinople  by  Mos- 
lems, that  of  the  Saracen  Muaviah  in  673,  began  nearly 
eight  centuries  before  the  last  Moslem  siege,  that  under 
the  Ottoman  conqueror  in  1453.  And  the  first  attack  on 
Constantinople  by  Russians,  in  865,  was  separated  by  more 
than  a  thousand  years  from  their  last  attack,  when  they 
reached  San  Stefano  within  sight  of  the  minarets.  For 
all  this  thousand  years  the  Russian  has  hungered  and 
thirsted  for  the  '  Sacred  City,'  whether  it  were  held  by 
Romans,  Greeks,  Latins,  or  Ottomans  —  and  hitherto  he 
has  hungered  and  thirsted  in  vain. 

They  count  more  than  twenty  sieges  in  all ;  but  the 
most  memorable  are  undoubtedly  the  triumphant  repulse 
of  Persians  and  Avars  in  the  reign  of  Heraclius  in  616, 
and  again  in  626  ;  the  glorious  defeat  of  the  Saracens  in 
673,  in  the  reign  of  Constantine  iv.,  and  again  in  717,  in 
the  reign  of  Leo  in.  ;  and  lastly,  the  two  successful  sieges 
— when  Constantinople  was  captured  by  the  Venetians  and 
Crusaders  in  1203-4;  and  again  when  it  was  stormed  by 
Mohammed  the  Conqueror  in  1453.  Of  all  memorable 
and  romantic  sieges  on  record,  these  two  are  the  most 
impressive  to  the  historic  imagination,  by  virtue  of  the 
crowding  of  dramatic  incidents,  the  singular  energy  and 
wonderful  resources  they  display,  and  the  vast  issues 
which  hung  on  the  event.  The  siege  of  Tyre  by  Alexan- 
Y 


THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

der,  of  Syracuse  by  Nicias,  of  Carthage  by  Scipio,  the  two 
sieges  of  Jerusalem  by  Titus  and  by  Godfrey,  the  succes- 
sive sackings  of  Rome,  the  defence  of  Rhodes  and  Malta 
against  the  Turks  —  none  of  these  can  quite  equal  in  vivid 
colour  and  breathless  interest  the  two  great  captures  of 
Constantinople,  and  certainly  the  last.  It  stands  out  on 
the  canvas  of  history  by  the  magnitude  of  the  issues  in- 
volved to  religion,  to  nations,  to  civilisation,  in  the  glow- 
ing incidents  of  the  struggle,  in  the  heroism  of  the  defence 
and  of  the  attack,  in  the  dramatic  catastrophe  and  personal 
contrast  of  two  typical  chiefs,  one  at  the  head  of  the  con- 
querors and  the  other  of  the  defeated.  And  by  a  singular 
fortune,  this  thrilling  drama,  in  a  great  turning-point  of 
human  civilisation,  has  been  told  in  the  most  splendid 
chapter  of  the  most  consummate  history  which  our  lan- 
guage has  produced. 

The  storming  and  sack  of  Constantinople  in  the  Fourth 
Crusade  by  a  mixed  host  of  Venetian,  Flemish,  Italian,  and 
French  filibusters,  a  story  so  well  told  by  Mr.  E.  Pears  in 
his  excellent  monograph,  was  not  only  one  of  the  most 
extraordinary  adventures  of  the  Middle  Ages,  but  one  of 
the  most  wanton  crimes  against  civilisation  committed  by 
feudal  lawlessness  and  religious  bigotry,  at  a  time  of  con- 
fusion and  superstition.  It  is  a  dark  blot  on  the  record  of 
the  Church,  and  on  the  memory  of  Innocent  in.,  and  a 
standing  monument  of  the  anarchy  and  rapacity  to  which 
Feudalism  was  liable  to  degenerate.  The  sack  of  Constan- 
tinople by  the  so-called  soldiers  of  the  cross  in  the'thirteenth 
century  was  far  more  bloodthirsty,  more  wanton,  more 
destructive  than  the  storming  of  Constantinople  by  the 
followers  of  Mahomet  in  the  fifteenth  century.  It  had  far 
less  historic  justification,  it  had  more  disastrous  effects  on 
human  progress,  and  it  introduced  a  less  valuable  and  less 
enduring  type  of  civilised  life.  The  Crusaders,  who  had 


CONSTANTINOPLE    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  339 

no  serious  aim  but  plunder,  effected  nothing  but  destruc- 
tion. They  practically  annihilated  the  East  Roman  Em- 
pire, which  never  recovered  from  this  fatal  blow.  It  is 
true  that  the  Byzantine  Empire  had  been  rapidly  decaying- 
for  more  than  a  century,  and  that  its  indispensable  service 
to  civilisation  was  completed.  But  the  crusading  bucca- 
neers burned  down  a  great  part  of  the  richest  city  of 
Europe,  which  was  a  museum  and  remnant  of  antiquity ; 
they  wantonly  destroyed  priceless  works  of  art,  buildings, 
books,  records,  and  documents.  They  effected  nothing  of 
their  own  purpose ;  and  what  they  indirectly  caused  was 
a  stimulus  to  Italian  commerce,  the  dispersion  through 
Europe  of  some  arts,  and  the  removal  of  the  last  barrier 
against  the  entrance  of  the  Moslem  into  Europe. 

The  conquest  by  the  Ottomans  in  the  fifteenth  century 
was  a  very  different  thing  —  a  problem  too  complex  to  be 
hastily  touched.  Europe,  as  we  have  seen,  was  by  that 
time  strong  enough  to  win  in  the  long  and  tremendous 
struggle  with  Islam  ;  it  was  ready  to  receive  and  use  the 
profound  intellectual  and  artistic  impulse  which  was  caused 
by  the  dispersion  of  the  Byzantine  Greeks.  The  Ottoman 
conquest  was  no  mere  raid,  but  the  foundation  of  a  Euro- 
pean Empire,  now  in  the  fifth  century  of  its  existence. 
The  wonderful  tale  of  the  rise,  zenith,  wane,  and  decay  of 
the  European  Empire  of  the  Padishah  of  Roum  —  one 
of  the  least  familiar  to  the  general  reader  —  is  borne  in 
upon  the  traveller  to  Stamboul  in  the  series  of  magnificent 
mosques  of  the  conquering  sultans  of  the  fifteenth,  six- 
teenth, and  seventeenth  centuries,  in  the  exquisite  foun- 
tains, the  mausoleums,  the  khans  and  fortresses,  minarets 
and  towers,  and  the  strange  city  of  kiosques,  palaces,  gates, 
gardens,  and  terraces,  known  to  us  as  the  Seraglio.  In 
these  vast  and  stately  mosques,  in  the  profusion  of  glow- 
ing ornament,  porcelains,  tiles,  and  carvings,  in  the  incon- 


34O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

gruous  jumble  of  styles,  in  the  waste,  squalor,  and  tawdry 
remnants  of  the  abandoned  palace  of  the  Padishahs,  we 
read  the  history  of  the  Ottoman  Turks  for  the  last  five 
centuries  —  splendour  beside  ruin,  exquisite  art  beside 
clumsy  imitation,  courage  and  pride  beside  apathy  and  de- 
spair, a  magnificent  soldiery  as  of  old  with  a  dogged  per- 
sistency that  dies  hard,  a  patient  submission  to  inevitable 
destiny  beside  fervour,  loyalty,  dignity,  and  a  race  patriot- 
ism which  are  not  to  be  found  in  the  rank  and  file  of 
European  capitals. 

But  Stamboul  is  not  only  a  school  of  Byzantine  history ; 
it  has  rich  lessons  of  European  history.  We  see  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  living  there  still  unreformed  —  the  Middle  Ages 
with  their  colour  and  their  squalor,  their  ignorance  and 
credulity,  their  heroism  and  self-devotion,  their  traditions, 
resignation,  patience,  and  passionate  faith.  We  can  im- 
agine ourselves  in  some  city  of  the  early  Middle  Ages,  the 
meeting-place  of  nations,  Venice  or  Genoa,  Paris  or  Rome, 
or  even  old  Rome  in  the  age  of  Trajan,  where  races,  relig- 
ions, costumes,  ideas,  and  occupations  meet  side  by  side 
but  do  not  mix.  The  Moslem,  the  Armenian,  the  Greek, 
the  Jew,  the  Catholic,  have  their  own  quarters,  dress,  lan- 
guage, worship,  occupation,  law,  and  government.  They 
pass  as  if  invisible  to  each  other,  and  will  neither  eat,  pray, 
work,  trade,  or  converse  with  each  other.  Stand  upon  the 
bridge  across  the  Golden  Horn,  or  in  the  lovely  cloister  of 
Bayazid,  and  watch  the  green-turbaned  hadjis,  the  softas, 
hammals,  itinerant  vendors,  soldiers  and  sailors,  boatmen 
and  mendicants,  Roumelian  and  Anatolian  peasants,  with 
all  the  cosmopolitan  collection  of  the  busy  and  the  idle, 
from  the  Danube  to  the  Euphrates.  It  is  the  East  and 
the  West  on  their  one  neutral  meeting-ground,  the  one 
Oriental  spot  still  left  in  Europe,  the  one  mediaeval  capital 
that  has  survived  into  the  nineteenth  century. 


CHAPTER   XII. 

THE    PROBLEM    OF    CONSTANTINOPLE.1 

THE  city  of  the  Seven  Hills  upon  the  Golden  Horn  is  at 
once  the  paradox  of  mediaeval  history,  and  the  dilemma  of 
European  statesmen.  In  the  historical  field  it  presents  a 
set  of  problems  which  no  historian  has  adequately  solved,  the 
full  difficulties  of  which  have  been  duly  grasped  only  in  our 
own  age.  In  the  political  world  it  presents  the  great  crux, 
over  which  former  generations  laboured,  fought,  and  bled  ; 
which  our  own  generation  seems  willing  to  give  up  as 
insoluble,  to  ignore  and  to  intrust  to  chance. 

There  is  danger  that,  in  the  minute  research  into  local 
institutions  that  is  now  in  vogue,  the  true  historical  impor- 
tance of  Byzantine  story  may  be  forgotten ;  and  danger 
also  that,  in  the  roar  of  battle  round  our  democratic  issues, 
the  political  importance  of  Constantinople  as  an  eternal 
factor  in  the  European  balance  of  power  may  be  quite  lost 
to  sight.  Mediaeval  and  modern  annals  offer  to  the  student 
no  subjects  of  meditation  more  fascinating  and  more  mys- 
terious than  are  the  fifteen  centuries  of  New  Rome.  And 
the  dilemma  of  what  is  to  be  the  ultimate  fate  of  Constan- 
tinople is  as  urgent  as  ever,  as  perplexing  as  ever  :  —  nay, 
it  is  much  more  urgent,  more  perplexing  than  ever.  The 
ignorant  prejudice  of  conventional  historians  about  the 
rottenness  of  the  'Lower  Empire'  may  be  set  against 
the  purblind  commonplace  of  conventional  politicians  about 
the  Turkish  question  having  been  solved  by  the  British 
occupation  of  Egypt. 

1  Fortnightly  Review,  May  1894,  No.  329,  vol.  55. 


342  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

I.    The  Historical  Problem. 

Since  the  works  on  Byzantine  history,  produced  within 
the  last  thirty  years  by  European  scholars,  it  is  no  longer 
possible  to  repeat  the  stock  phrases  of  the  last  century 
about  the  puerility  and  impotence  of  the  '  Lower  Empire." 
By  far  the  most  important  contribution  to  this  task  by 
English  students  is  the  Later  Roman  Empire  of  Professor 
Bury,  whose  two  solid  octavos  bring  the  history  of  the 
Roman  Empire  of  the  East  down  to  the  foundation  of 
the  Roman  Empire  of  the  West,  in  800  A.D.  When  he 
has  completed  his  work  down  to  the  capture  of  Constan- 
tinople by  the  Turks,  or  at  least  to  its  capture  by  the 
Crusaders  of  1204  A.D.,  it  will  be  evident  how  much  the 
history  of  the  Later  Empire  has  been  distorted  by  jealousy, 
pedantry,  and  fanaticism.  Even  the  genius  of  Gibbon 
could  not  wholly  emancipate  him  from  current  prejudices  ; 
and  he  necessarily  worked  without  the  essential  materials 
which  the  industry  of  the  last  hundred  years  has  collected. 
What  has  to  be  explained  is  the  problem  —  how  a  political 
fabric,  built  on  such  foundations  of  vice  and  chaos,  main- 
tained the  longest  succession  recorded  in  history  :  —  how 
a  state  of  such  discordant  elements  overcame  such  a  com- 
bination of  attacks:  —  what  was  it  that  made  Constanti- 
nople, for  some  five  or  six  centuries  after  the  capture  of 
Rome,  the  intellectual,  artistic,  and  commercial  metropolis 
of  mediaeval  Europe  :  —  by  what  resources  did  she,  during 
eight  centuries,  resist  the  torrent  of  Asiatic  and  Musul- 
man  soldiery,  before  which  the  feudal  chivalry  of  the  West 
was  so  frequently  baffled  and  crushed. 

The  origin  of  these  prejudices  and  of  such  falsification 
of  history  is  plain  enough.  The  judgment  of  Western 
Europe  on  the  Eastern  Empire  was  mainly  derived  from, 
and  coloured  by,  that  of  Catholic  churchmen  ;  and  during 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.         343 

the  eleven  centuries  which  divide  the  first  Constantine 
from  the  last,  the  Catholic  Church  has  borne  an  irrecon- 
cilable jealousy  towards  the  Orthodox  Church.  Their 
very  official  titles  —  the  first  claiming  universal  obedience, 
the  second  claiming  absolute  truth  —  involved  them  in  a 
war  wherein  there  could  be  neither  victory  nor  truce. 
The  chiefs  who  claimed  to  rule  as  representatives  of  Char- 
lemagne, and  all  who  depended  upon  them,  or  held  title 
under  them  (that  is,  the  greater  part  of  Western  Europe), 
were  bound  to  treat  the  claims  of  the  Eastern  Empire  as 
preposterous  insolence.  The  traders  of  the  Mediterra- 
nean regarded  the  Byzantine  wealth  and  commerce  much 
as  the  navigators  of  the  sixteenth  century  regarded  the 
wealth  and  trade  of  the  Indies  —  as  the  lawful  prize  of  the 
strongest.  And  lastly,  the  scholars,  the  poets,  the  chroni- 
clers of  the  West,  from  the  age  of  the  Crusades  to  the  age 
of  Gibbon,  have  disdained  a  literature,  in  which,  as  they 
said,  spiritless  and  obsequious  annalists  recorded  the  do- 
ings of  their  masters  in  a  bastard  Greek.  Western  genius, 
Western  Christianity,  Western  heroism  and  civilisation 
much  surpass  the  Eastern  type ;  but,  with  such  a  combina- 
tion of  causes  for  hostility  and  contempt,  the  West  could 
not  fail  to  be  grossly  unjust  to  the  record  of  the  East. 

The  root  of  the  injustice  is  the  treating  of  a  thousand 
years  of  continuous  history  as  one  uniform  piece,  and 
attributing  to  the  noblest  periods  and  the  greatest  chiefs 
the  infamies  and  crimes  which  belong  to  the  worst.  Un- 
fortunately, we  are  much  more  familiar  with  the  periods 
of  rottenness  and  decline  than  with  the  ages  of  heroism 
and  glory ;  every  one  knows  something  of  the  Theodoras, 
Zoes,  and  Irenes,  and,  too  often,  very  little  of  Heraclius, 
Leo,  and  Basil.  The  five  centuries  which  intervene  from 
Justinian  to  the  Comnenian  house — a  period  as  long  as 
that  which  separates  Camillus  from  Marcus  Aurelius  —  is 


344  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

the  important  part  of  the  Roman  Empire  of  the  East; 
and  the  really  grand  epochs  are  in  the  seventh,  eighth,  and 
tenth  centuries — whose  heroes,  Heraclius,  Leo  in.,  and 
Basil  ii.,  may  hold  their  own  with  the  greatest  rulers  of 
ancient  or  of  modern  story. 

The  most  urgent  problem  of  all  is  to  find  an  adequate 
name  to  describe  the  Empire  of  which  Constantinople  was 
the  capital  for  at  least  a  thousand  years.  Every  one  of 
the  conventional  names  involves  a  confusion  or  misrepre- 
sentation, great  or  small.  '  Lower  Empire '  — '  Greek  Em- 
pire '  —  '  Byzantine  Empire '  — '  Eastern  Empire '  — '  Later 
Empire '  — '  Roman  Empire '  —  either  suggest  a  wrong 
idea,  or  fail  to  express  the  true  idea  in  full.  In  what 
sense  was  the  empire  at  Constantinople  '  Lower '  ?  It  cer- 
tainly regarded  itself  as  infinitely  higher ;  an  advance  even 
upon  the  classical  Roman  Empire.  Justinian  with  justice 
holds  his  rule  to  be  above  that  of  Aurelian  and  Diocletian  ; 
and  from  his  day  to  the  age  of  the  great  Charles,  there 
was  no  power  in  Europe  which  could  compare  for  a 
moment  with  the  Roman  Empire  of  the  Bosphorus.  The 
Empire  was  not  '  Greek,'  even  in  tongue,  until  the  seventh 
century ;  it  was  not  Greek  in  spirit  until  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury ;  till  then  hardly  any  of  its  emperors,  soldiers,  or 
chiefs  had  been  Greek ;  and  it  was  never  quite  Greek  by 
race.  If  we  say  '  Byzantine '  Empire,  we  are  localising  a 
power  which  was  curiously  composite  in  race,  nationality, 
character,  and  tradition  ;  and  the  term  '  Byzantine '  has 
a  sense  too  directly  contrary  to  Roman,  and  also  has 
acquired  a  derogatory  meaning.  The  great  heroes  of  the 
empire  are  utterly  unlike  what  men  now  understand  by 
'Byzantine';  and  there  could  hardly  be  a  more  violent 
contrast  than  that  between  the  Alexius  or  Bryennius  of 
Sir  Walter  Scott's  romance  and  the  Nicephorus  Phocas  or 
Basil  ii.  of  actual  history.  '  Eastern  Empire '  is  erroneous 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.         345 

and  ambiguous ;  for  it  suggests  a  break  with  Rome,  and 
it  applies  to  the  kingdoms  of  Persians,  Saracens,  or  Otto- 
mans, to  the  Sultan  of  Roum,  or  the  Emperors  of  Nicsea 
and  Trebizond.  '  Roman  Empire  '  is  accurate  in  a  sense. 
But  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  there  were  often 
two  co-ordinate  governments ;  and  after  the  coronation  of 
Charlemagne,  in  800  A.D.,  there  were  always  two  Roman 
Empires,  and  sometimes  more.  The  term,  '  Later  Roman 
Empire,'  which  Mr.  Bury  adopts,  is  far  better ;  but  it 
might  be  applied  to  Valentinian  in.,  or  to  Romulus  Au- 
gustulus  ;  and  it  fails  to  suggest  the  continuance  of  the 
Empire  for  a  thousand  years.  After  the  coronation  of 
Charles,  the  term,  'Later  Roman  Empire,'  is  inadequate; 
and  yet  that  event  marks  no  essential  break  in  the  Em- 
pire at  Constantinople. 

What  we  want  is  a  term  which  will  describe  the  con- 
tinuity of  the  Roman  Empire,  after  its  seat  had  been  per- 
manently removed  to  the  Bosphorus,  and  yet  distinguish 
it  from  the  revived  Empire  of  Charles,  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire,  and  all  other  powers  which  claimed  a  title  from 
Rome.  The  features  to  be  connoted  are  the  prolongation 
and  evolution  of  the  vast  political  organism  of  Augustus 
and  Trajan,  its  unbroken  continuity,  at  any  rate,  down  to 
the  thirteenth  century,  and  the  dominant  material  fact 
that  its  permanent  centre  of  government  was  transferred 
to  the  Bosphorus:  that  it  had  become  Christian,  but  not 
Catholic.  We  go  wrong  if  we  drop  the  title  'Roman'; 
we  go  wrong  if  we  ignore  the  fact  of  the  transfer  of  sov- 
ereignty to  Constantinople  ;  we  go  wrong  if  we  fail  to 
mark  how  much  this  implied,  both  in  the  spiritual  and 
the  political  sphere.  Under  the  conditions,  the  proper 
title  is,  '  The  Roman  Empire  at  Constantinople.'  This 
is  strictly  accurate  and  fairly  complete.  It  denotes  the 
whole  period  of  eleven  centuries  which  separates  the  first 


346  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

Constantine  from  the  last.  It  is  impossible  to  suppose  it 
applied  either  to  Romulus  Augustulus,  Charlemagne,  or 
Otto.  And  it  defines  the  unbroken  continuity  of  govern- 
ment from  its  permanent  seat  on  the  Bosphorus.  A  sim- 
pler equivalent  would  be  —  the  Empire  of  New  Rome. 

The  next  problem  is  to  group  the  epochs  of  this  immense 
succession  of  eleven  centuries ;  to  show  their  diversity  in 
the  midst  of  continuity ;  to  distinguish  the  true  periods  of 
greatness  and  of  growth,  and  the  real  eras  of  corrup- 
tion and  decay.  Unfortunately  this  is  what  Gibbon  has 
omitted  to  do,  what  he  has  even  done  not  a  little  to  make 
difficult.  Of  his  eight  octavo  volumes  five  are  devoted  to 
the  history  of  about  five  centuries,  and  three  only  are  given 
to  the  remaining  eight  centuries.  He  himself  was  struck 
with  the  apparent  paradox,  which  he  seems  to  excuse  (at 
the  opening  of  his  48th  chapter)  by  his  own  and  the  reader's 
fatigue  in  the  melancholy  task  of  recording  the  annals  of 
the  Eastern  Empire.  The  genius  of  the  greatest  of  his- 
torians has  been  betrayed  into  no  error  more  capital  than 
that  which  led  him  to  describe  the  annals  of  the  Empire 
from  Heraclius  to  the  last  Constantine  as  'a  tedious  and 
uniform  tale  of  weakness  and  misery.'  Gibbon,  it  is  plain, 
was  partly  misled  by  the  dearth  of  writings,  and  partly  over- 
whelmed by  the  enormous  scale  of  his  ever-enlarging  sur- 
vey. But  with  all  that  we  now  have  at  hand,  it  is  wonderful 
to  think  that  he  was  ever  tempted  to  abandon  'the  Greek 
slaves  and  their  servile  historians.'  If  this  is  a  description 
of  the  Iconoclasts  and  the  Basils,  Leo  the  Deacon  and 
Nicetas,  language  must  have  a  new  meaning.  In  truth,  'a 
tedious  tale  of  weakness '  would  be  as  aptly  applied  to  the 
lives  of  William  the  Conqueror  and  the  Plantagenet  kings 
as  to  the  exploits  and  adventures  of  Leo  in.,  Constantine 
v.,  the  two  Basils,  Nlcephorus  Phocas,  John  Zimisces,  Kalo- 
Joannes,  and  Manuel. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.         347 

Even  in  the  matter  of  literary  culture  and  pure  Greek, 
we  are  apt  to  compare  the  Byzantine  historians  with  clas- 
sical or  with  our  modern  authors.  Clearly  we  ought  to 
compare  them  with  their  contemporaries  in  Europe.  The 
iambics  in  which  George  of  Pisidia  celebrated  the  exploits 
of  Heraclius,  or  those  in  which  the  Deacon  Theodosius 
sang  the  recovery  of  Crete  by  Nicephorus  Phocas,  are  not 
classical,  but  rather  frigid  as  poetry  ;  yet  they  are  far  less 
barbarous  than  any  Latin  poetry  of  the  seventh  and  tenth 
centuries.  The  Greek  of  Leo  the  Deacon  in  the  tenth  cen- 
tury does  not  differ  from  Xenophon's,  from  whom  he  is 
separated  by  more  than  thirteen  centuries,  so  much  as  the 
English  of  Langland  differs  from  that  of  Milton.  The  pro- 
longation of  the  Greek  language  over  2800  years  from 
Homer  to  Tricoupi,  its  continual  epochs  of  revival,  purifi- 
cation, and  ultimate  return  upon  its  own  classical  type,  are 
among  the  most  extraordinary  facts  in  the  evolution  of 
human  thought.  And  the  persistence  of  the  same  written 
literature  at  Constantinople  for  at  least  twenty  centuries  is 
without  parallel,  at  least  in  Europe. 

Happily  our  most  recent  historians  are  in  the  main 
agreed  as  to  the  essential  epochs  and  the  true  heroes  of 
Byzantine  history.  It  is  agreed  that  from  the  age  of  Jus- 
tinian to  the  Crusades  the  traditions  of  law,  administration, 
Greek  literature,  commerce,  and  artistic  manufactures  were 
mainly  preserved  to  Europe  by  the  Roman  Empire  of  the 
Bosphorus.  It  is  agreed  that  for  all  active  ends  the  Empire 
was  extinguished  by  the  Fourth  Crusade,  and  had  long 
been  in  an  exhausted  condition  even  at  the  opening  of  the 
First  Crusade.  The  Isaurian  and  Basilian  dynasties,  that 
is  the  eighth,  ninth,  tenth,  and  part  of  the  eleventh  cen- 
turies, were  epochs  on  the  whole  of  valour,  able  govern- 
ment, prosperity,  and  civilisation,  if  compared  with  the 
condition  of  what  used  to  be  called  the  dark  ages  of 


348  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

Europe.  These  centuries,  with  the  reigns  of  Justinian 
and  Heraclius  in  the  sixth  and  seventh  centuries,  consti- 
tute an  epoch  which  is  worthy  to  rank  with  the  Roman 
Empire  from  Julius  t&  Theodosius  on  the  one  hand,  and 
on  the  other  with  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  from  Otto  the 
Great  to  Frederick  n.  The  Roman  Empire  of  Charle- 
magne, the  Holy  Roman  Empire  of  Otto,  both  in  sub- 
stance and  in  ceremonial,  were  much  more  truly  imitations 
and  rivals  of  the  Roman  Empire  of  the  Bosphorus  than 
they  were  revivals  of  the  State  of  Augustus  and  Trajan  ; 
of  whom  all  real  memory  was  entirely  lost  in  the  eighth 
century,  whom,  as  heathens  without  the  semblance  of 
Church  or  Patriarch,  it  was  impossible  that  Franks  and 
Saxons  should  imitate  or  approve. 

At  the  close  of  his  second  volume  Professor  Bury  sums 
up  the  function  of  the  later  Roman  Empire  under  the  five 
following  heads,  of  which  his  whole  work  is  an  illustration 
and  commentary :  — 

1.  It  was  the  bulwark  of  Europe  against  the  Asiatic 

danger ; 

2.  It  kept  alive  Greek  and  Roman  culture  ; 

3.  It  maintained  European  commerce; 

4.  It  preserved  the  idea  of  the  Roman  Empire ; 

5.  It  embodied  a  principle  of  permanence. 

To  these  may  be  added  the  following  :  — 

(a)  It  was  the  direct  source  of  civilisation  to  the  whole 

of  the  Balkan  peninsula,  and  to  all  Europe  east  of 
the  Vistula  and  the  Carpathians  ; 

(b]  It   was   the   type  of  a  State    Church— a   spiritual 

power  dependent  on  and  co-operating  with  the 
sovereign  power,  and  not,  like  the  Catholic 
Church,  independent  and  often  antagonistic. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.         349 

The  Empire  of  New  Rome  did  much  more  than  preserve 
the  idea  of  the  Roman  Empire.  It  prolonged  the  Roman 
Empire  itself  in  a  new,  and  even  in  some  respects,  a  more 
developed  form.  As  Mr.  Freeman  well  puts  it,  '  the  East- 
ern Empire  is  the  surest  witness  to  the  unity  of  history,' 
the  most  complete  answer  to  the  conventional  opposition 
between  'ancient'  and  'modern'  history.  That  myste- 
rious gulf — that  unexplained  paralysis  —  which,  we  are 
told,  occurred  in  the  history  of  European  civilisation  about 
the  fifth  century,  and  was  hardly  removed  by  the  ninth  or 
tenth,  has  no  existence  whatever  if  we  trace  the  internal 
condition  of  New  Rome  from  the  age  of  Theodosius  to  the 
age  of  Basil  ir. 

We  are  so  greatly  influenced  by  literary  standards  and 
classical  art  that  we  hasten  to  condemn  an  age  in  which 
we  find  these  decay.  It  is  quite  true  that  pure  Latinity, 
elegant  Greek,  and  Attic  art  were  not  to  be  found  in  New 
Rome,  and  seemed  to  have  perished  with  the  coming  of 
the  Huns  and  the  Goths.  But  this  did  not  form  the  whole 
of  civilisation  or  even  the  bulk  of  it.  In  many  things  the 
civilisation  of  the  Byzantine  Empire  was  far  higher  than 
the  civilisation  of  the  Augustan  Empire.  The  Court  of 
Justinian  or  of  Leo  in.,  or  of  Irene,  of  Theophilus,  of  Basil 
i.,  or  Constantine  Porphyrogennetus,  would  have  been  con- 
sidered in  the  Middle  Ages  far  more  like  civilised  life  than 
the  courts  of  Nero,  Hadrian,  or  Diocletian.  In  many  of 
the  most  essential  features  of  civil  administration,  the 
governments  of  Justinian,  of  the  Iconoclast  and  Mace- 
donian dynasties,  were  really  (in  spite  of  barbarous  punish- 
ments, tyranny,  and  extortion)  a  great  improvement  on  the 
imperialism  of  the  Caesars  on  the  Tiber. 

Obviously  the  religious,  moral,  and  domestic  life  —  bad 
as  it  was  from  our  standard  —  was  better  than  that  which 
is  described  by  Juvenal  and  Tacitus,  and  was  better  than 


35O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

that  of  the  greater  part  of  Europe  in  the  centuries  between 
the  fifth  and  the  tenth.  And  in  matters  of  taste,  it  is  plain 
that  those  only  can  speak  of  the  '  servile  debasement '  of 
Byzantine  art  who  have  never  traced  the  influence  upon 
Europe  of  the  industries,  manufactures,  inventions,  and 
arts,  which  had  their  seat  in  Constantinople,  who  have  not 
studied  descriptions  of  the  great  Palace  beside  the  Hippo- 
drome, of  the  Boucoleon  and  Blachernae,  and  who  know 
nothing  of  S.  Sophia,  S.  Irene,  SS.  Sergius  and  Bacchus, 
the  Church  Tes  Choras,  and  all  the  remains  of  architec- 
tural and  decorative  skill  that  extend  in  unbroken  series 
from  the  age  of  Justinian  to  the  Crusades.  The  vast  ad- 
ministrative, legal,  and  military  organisation  of  Augustus 
and  Trajan  no  more  perished  in  the  sack  of  Rome  than 
did  the  language,  the  culture,  and  the  aesthetic  aptitude  of 
the  Greco-Roman  world.  Both  took  new  forms  ;  they  did 
not  perish. 

After  all  that  has  been  done  by  Finlay,  Freeman,  Bury, 
and  Pears  within  the  last  generation,  as  well  as  by  scholars 
in  other  countries,  it  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  this  is 
henceforth  one  of  the  cardinal  truths  of  European  history. 
Mr.  Bury's  five  propositions  as  to  the  functions  of  the  later 
Roman  Empire  are  perfectly  true,  and  may  be  emphasised 
and  extended  rather  than  qualified  or  diminished.  What 
we  now  especially  need  is  to  have  it  explained  in  detail 
how  these  results  came  about.  We  want  the  inner,  eco- 
nomic, social,  bureaucratic,  industrial,  and  ecclesiastical  his- 
tory of  the  Empire  —  not  so  much  its  court  annals  or  its 
dynastic  revolutions.  We  have  had  the  imperial  and  polit- 
ical history  traced  in  sufficient  fulness  ;  the  administrative 
and  organic  life  of  the  society  is  what  we  now  need  to  grasp 
and  explore.  This  is  obviously  a  most  complex  and  diffi- 
cult task,  only  to  be  achieved  by  indirect  means  and  the 
study  of  a  variety  of  sources.  The  art,  the  industry,  the 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.         35 1 

trade,  the  manners,  the  statistics,  the  law,  the  theology, 
the  political  and  civic  institutions  of  the  Roman  Empire 
from  the  age  of  Heraclius  to  that  of  the  Comneni  is  what 
we  now  need  to  explore.  And  it  is  a  field  in  which  Eng- 
lish scholars,  apart  from  Finlay,  Bury,  and  some  theologians, 
have  done  little. 

Especially  we  need  a  History  of  Byzantine  Christianity, 
written  in  the  spirit  of  Milman  —  from  the  point  of  view 
of  an  enlightened  historian  and  not  of  an  official  Church- 
man. Almost  everything  that  we  have  yet  got  on  the 
subject  of  the  Byzantine  Church  is  insensibly  coloured  by 
the  Catholic  or  anti-Catholic  bias.  A  history  of  Byzantine 
art,  of  Byzantine  literature  and  language,  of  Byzantine 
manners,  commerce,  law,  and  municipal  organisation  as 
these  existed  between  Justinian  and  Basil,  '  the  slayer  of 
Bulgarians  '  —  a  period  of  five  centuries  — •  would  enable  us 
to  answer  the  enigma  of  Constantinople.  On  the  conti- 
nent Krause,  Heyd,  Hopf,  Gfrorer,  Salzenburg,  Mordtmann, 
Rambaud,  Sabatier,  de  Saulcy,  Labarte,  Schlumberger, 
Bayet,  Drapeyron,  de  Muralt,  Riant,  as  well  as  many 
Greek,  Russian,  and  Oriental  scholars,  have  worked  in 
these  mines.  Mr.  Oman  has  given  us  a  useful  summary 
of  Byzantine  history  in  the  series  called  The  Story  of  the 
Nations.  But  in  England,  since  Finlay,  we  have  had 
little  of  original  work  except  from  Mr.  Bury,  who  has  yet 
not  gone  further  than  the  eighth  century.  The  most  "in- 
teresting and  perhaps  the  most  obscure  period  of  all  is  the 
Basilian  dynasty,  from  A.D.  867-1057.  And  on  this  we 
sorely  need  accessible  guidance.  All  that  Gibbon  has  to 
tell  us  of  these  two  hundred  years  is  contained  in  about 
one  hundred  pages,  and  Finlay  has  compressed  his  narra- 
tive into  rather  more  than  twice  that  space. 

When  we  have  completely  explored  these  various  sub- 
jects we  may  be  able  to  answer  the  problems:  (i)  How 


352  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

did  the  Roman  Empire  maintain  itself  at  Constantinople 
for  eleven  centuries  ?  (2)  Why  was  it  able  for  eight  cen- 
turies to  resist  not  only  the  Western  but  the  Eastern  in- 
vasions, before  which  every  other  city  and  kingdom  fell  ? 
(3)  Why  was  Constantinople  for  five  centuries  the  most 
populous,  wealthy,  and  civilised  city  in  Europe  ? 

The  answer  in  general  is  a  somewhat  complicated  one  of 
several  terms.  First,  the  Roman  Empire  removed  itself 
to  the  strongest  and  most  dominant  spot  in  all  Europe. 
Next,  it  evolved  a  wholly  new  organisation  :  centralised, 
legalised,  and  industrial.  It  founded  the  most  wonderful 
bureaucracy  ever  known.  It  developed  a  maritime  ascend- 
ency, and  a  world-wide  commerce.  It  eliminated  every 
vestige  of  provincial,  national,  and  race  prejudice,  and 
called  every  subject  man  from  Sicily  to  the  Euphrates  a 
Roman  and  nothing  else.  And  lastly,  and  perhaps  mainly, 
it  became  the  first,  and  for  ages  the  only,  Christian  Em- 
pire, having  a  powerful  Church,  which  was  its  faithful  and 
loyal  instrument,  on  whose  mysterious  prestige  it  rested, 
and  which  it  always  treated  as  part  of  itself. 

I.  Nothing  further  need  be  said  as  to  the  unique  source 
of  strength,  both  for  offence  and  for  defence,  which  the 
genius  of  Constantine  discovered  on  the  Bosphorus.  The 
removal  of  the  seat  of  empire  from  the  Tiber  to  the  Bos- 
phorus was  the  only  mode  in  which  the  Empire  could  have 
been  preserved,  whilst,  at  the  same  time,  this  made  possi- 
ble its  political,  religious,  and  moral  transformation.  The 
exact  steps,  details,  and  ultimate  type  of  this  transforma- 
tion are  precisely  the  points  on  which  we  need  light.  We 
see  the  stupendous  machine  which  this  bureaucracy  and 
State  Church  became,  but  we  know  very  little  about  its 
actual  working  and  its  inner  life.  We  judge  its  power  by 
results  only,  and  by  the  startling  paradox  that  the  machin- 
ery of  a  most  disparate  organism  goes  on  working  undis- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.         353 

turbed  by  fatuity,  strife,  and  anarchy  in  the  supreme 
centre.  Whatever  the  vices  and  follies  which  raged  in 
the  imperial  palaces  for  generations  together,  disciplined 
and  well-armed  troops,  powerful  navies,  military  engines 
and  stores,  skilful  generals,  able  governors,  and  expert 
diplomatists,  rise  up  time  after  time  in  infinite  succession 
to  save  the  empire,  hold  it  together,  restore  its  losses,  and 
increase  its  wealth,  and  this  over  the  whole  period  of  eight 
centuries  from  Theoclosius  to  Isaac  Angelus. 

2.  The  material  source  of  this  strength  in  the  empire 
was  primarily  its  sea-power  and  its  command  for  five  cen- 
turies of  the  commerce  of  the  whole  Mediterranean.     When 
we  study  the  campaigns  of  Heraclius  and  of  Nicephorus, 
when  we  follow  in  Leo  the  Deacon  the  great  expedition 
to  recover  Crete,  we  are  struck  with  the  vast   maritime 
resources,  the  engines  and  ships  of  scientific  war  which 
the  empire  possessed  in  the  seventh  and  tenth  centuries. 
Nothing  in  Europe  at  that  date  could  produce  any  such 
sea-power.     As    Nicephorus    Phocas  very  fairly   told   the 
angry  envoy  of  Otto,  he  could  lay  in  ashes  any  sea-board 
town  of  the  Mediterranean.     When  the  cities  of  Italy  suc- 
ceeded to  the  commerce  of  Constantinople,  they  held  it  in 
shares  and  fought  for  it  amongst  themselves.     But  until 
the  rise  of  Venice,  Pisa,  and  Palermo,  Constantinople  ruled 
the  seas  from  Sicily  to  Rhodes,  and  relatively  to  her  con- 
temporaries with  a  far  more  complete  supremacy. 

3.  It  was  this  maritime  ascendency,  this  central  position 
in  the  Bosphorus,  and  this  vast  Mediterranean  commerce 
which  was  the  foundation  of  the  wealth  of  the  empire  — 
a  wealth  which,  relatively  to  its   age,  exceeded  even  the 
wealth  and  maritime  ascendency  of  England  in  our  day, 
which  for  eight  centuries  hardly  ever  suffered  a  collapse, 
and  was  continually  being  renewed.     We  must  discount 
the  petulant  sneers  of  the  irritable  Bishop  Luitprand,  when 

z 


354  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

baffled  by  the  fierce  Nicephorus.  The  silk  industry,  the 
embroidery,  the  mosaic,  the  enamel,  the  metal  work,  the 
ivory  carving,  the  architecture,  the  military  engineering, 
the  artillery,  the  marine  appliances,  the  shipbuilding  art; 
the  trade  in  corn,  spices,  oil,  and  wine  ;  the  manuscripts,  the 
illuminations  of  Byzantium,  far  surpassed  anything  else  in 
Europe  to  be  found  in  the  epoch  between  the  reign  of 
Justinian  and  the  rise  of  the  Italian  cities.  Much  of 
what  we  call  mediaeval  art  decoration  and  art  fabrics  had 
their  real  origin,  both  industrial  and  aesthetic,  on  the 
Bosphorus,  or  were  carried  on  there  as  their  metropolitan 
centre. 

Nowhere  else  in  Europe  under  the  successors  of  Clovis 
and  Charlemagne  could  such  churches  have  been  raised  as 
those  of  the  Holy  Wisdom  and  Irene,  such  palaces  as  that 
beside  the  Hippodrome  or  the  Boucoleon,  such  mighty  for- 
tifications as  those  which  stretched  from  Blachernae  to  the 
Propontis.  Nowhere  could  Europe  in  the  ninth  and  tenth 
centuries  produce  such  enormous  wealth  as  that  possessed 
by  Theophilus,  Basil  i.,  or  Constantine  Porphyrogennetus, 
or  equip  such  fleets  and  armies  as  those  of  Nicephorus, 
John  Zimisces,  and  Basil  ir.  We  are  accustomed  to  com- 
pare the  art  and  the  civilisation  of  the  Byzantine  Empire 
with  those  of  much  later  ages  than  its  own,  mainly  because 
we  have  nothing  else  wherewith  to  compare  it  of  its  own 
epoch.  If  we  honestly  set  it  against  the  contemporary 
state  of  Europe,  from  the  era  of  Justinian  to  that  of  the 
Crusades,  it  will  be  seen  to  be  not  only  supreme  in  the  tra- 
ditions of  civilisation,  but  almost  to  stand  alone.  In  the 
eleventh  century,  without  doubt,  Western  Europe  was  or- 
ganised, and  began  its  triumphant  career,  with  the  Catholic 
Church  and  the  feudal  organism  in  full  development ;  and 
from  that  date  the  Byzantine  Empire  ceased  to  be  pre-emi- 
nent. But  its  vast  resources  and  the  splendour  and  civil- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.         355 

ised  arts  of  Constantinople  still  continued  to  amaze  the 
Crusaders,  even  down  to  the  thirteenth  century. 

The  fact  is  that,  for  the  five  centuries  from  Justinian 
to  Isaac  Comnenus,  the  attacks  on  the  empire,  from  the 
European  side,  at  any  rate,  were  the  attacks  of  nomad, 
unorganised,  and  uncivilised  races  on  a  civilised  and  highly- 
organised  empire.  And  in  spite  of  anarchy,  corruption, 
and  effeminacy  at  the  Byzantine  court,  civilisation  and 
wealth  told  in  every  contest.  Greek  fire,  military  science, 
enormous  resources,  and  the  prestige  of  empire  always  bore 
down  wild  valour  and  predatory  enthusiasm.  Just  as  Rus- 
sia dominates  the  Turkoman  tribes  of  Central  Asia,  as 
Turkey  holds  back  the  valiant  Arabs  of  her  eastern  fron- 
tier, as  Egyptian  natives  with  British  officers  easily  master 
the  heroic  Ghazis  of  the  Soudan  —  so  the  Roman  Empire 
on  the  Bosphorus  beat  back  Huns,  Avars,  Persians,  Slaves, 
Bulgarians,  Patzinaks,  and  Russians.  We  need  only  to 
study  the  history  of  Russia  and  of  Turkey  to  learn  how 
the  organising  ability,  the  resources,  and  material  arts  of 
great  empires  outweigh  folly,  vice,  and  corruption  in  the 
palace. 

4.  Of  course  a  succession  of  victorious  campaigns  im- 
plies a  succession  of  valiant  armies  ;  and  there  is  nothing 
on  which  we  need  more  light  than  on  the  exact  organisa- 
tion and  national  constituents  of  those  Roman  armies 
which  crushed  Chosroes,  Muaviah,  Crumn,  Samuel,  and 
Hamdanids.  They  are  called  conventionally  'Greeks'; 
but  during  the  Heraclian,  Isaurian,  and  Basilian  dynasties 
there  seem  to  have  been  no  Greeks  at  all  in  the  land  forces. 
The  armies  were  always  composed  of  a  strange  collection 
of  races,  with  different  languages,  arms,  methods  of  fight- 
ing, and  types  of  civilisation.  They  were  often  magnifi- 
cent and  courageous  barbarians,  conspicuous  amongst 
whom  were  Scandinavians  and  English,  and  with  them 


356  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

some  of  the  most  warlike  braves  of  Asia  and  of  Europe. 
The  empire  made  no  attempt  to  destroy  their  national 
characteristics,  to  discourage  their  native  language,  relig- 
ion, or  habits.  Each  force  was  told  off  to  the  service 
which  suited  it  best,  and  was  trained  in  the  use  of  its 
proper  weapons.  They  remained  distinct  from  each  other, 
and  wholly  distinct  from  the  civil  population.  But  as  they 
could  not  unite,  they  seldom  became  so  great  a  danger  to 
the  empire  as  the  Praetorian  guard  of  the  Roman  army. 
The  organisation  and  management  of  such  a  heterogeneous 
body  of  mercenary  braves  required  extraordinary  skill  ;  but 
it  was  just  this  skill  which  the  rulers  of  Byzantium  pos- 
sessed. The  bond  of  the  whole  was  the  tradition  of 
discipline  and  the  consciousness  of  serving  the  Roman 
Emperor. 

The  modern  history  of  Russia  and  still  more  the  native 
armies  of  the  British  Empire  will  enable  us  to  understand 
how  the  work  ef  consolidation  was  effected.  The  Queen's 
dominions  are  at  this  hour  defended  by  men  of  almost 
every  race,  colour,  language,  religion,  costume,  and  habits. 
And  we  may  imagine  the  composite  character  of  the  By- 
zantine armies,  if  we  reflect  how  distant  wars  are  carried 
on  in  the  name  of  Victoria  by  Hindoos,  Musulmans,  Pa- 
thans,  Ghoorkas,  Afghans,  Egyptians,  Soudanese,  Zanzi- 
baris,  Negroes,  Nubians,  Zulus,  Kaffirs,  and  West  Indians, 
using  their  native  languages,  retaining  their  national  habits, 
and,  to  a  great  extent,  their  native  costume.  The  Roman 
Empire  was  maintained  from  its  centre  on  the  Bosphorus, 
somewhat  as  the  British  Empire  is  maintained  from  its 
centre  on  the  Thames,  by  wealth,  maritime  ascendency, 
the  traditions  of  empire,  and  organising  capacity  —  always 
with  the  great  difference  that  there  was  no  purely  Roman 
nucleus  as  there  is  a  purely  British  nucleus,  and  also  that 
the  soldiery  of  the  Roman  Empire  had  no  common  arma- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.         357 

ment,  and  was  not  officered  by  men  of  the  dominant  race, 
but  by  capable  leaders  indifferently  picked  from  any  race, 
except  the  Latin  or  the  Greek.  Dominant  race  there  was 
none  ;  nation  there  was  none.  Roman  meant  subject  of 
the  Emperor ;  Emperor  meant  the  chief  in  the  vermilion 
buskins,  installed  in  the  Palace  on  the  Bosphorus,  and  duly 
crowned  by  the  Orthodox  Patriarch  in  the  Church  of  the 
Holy  Wisdom. 

5.  Here  we  reach  the  last,  as  I  venture  to  think,  the 
main  element  of  strength  in  the  Empire  of  New  Rome  — 
its  alliance  with,  or  rather  its  possession  of,  the  Orthodox 
Church.  The  Roman  Empire  at  Constantinople  was  really, 
if  net  in  style,  a  Holy  Roman  Empire.  The  Patriarch  was 
one  of  its  officials.  The  venerable  Church  of  the  Holy 
Wisdom  was  almost  the  private  chapel  of  the  Emperor  ; 
the  Emperor's  palace  may  almost  be  described  as  the  Vati- 
can of  Byzantium.  The  relations  between  the  Emperor 
and  the  Patriarch  were  wholly  different  from  the  relations 
between  the  Emperor  at  Aachen  and  the  Pope.  Instead 
of  being  separated  by  a  thousand  miles  and  many  tribes 
and  peoples,  the  Emperor  of  the  Bosphorus  resided  in  the 
same  group  of  buildings,  worshipped,  and  was  adored  in 
the  same  metropolitan  temple,  and  sat  in  the  same  council- 
hall  with  his  Patriarch,  who  was  practically  one  of  his  great 
officers  of  State.  All  students  of  the  Carolingian  or  of  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire  know  how  immensely  Pipin,  Charles, 
the  Henries,  and  the  Ottos  were  strengthened  by  the  sup- 
port of  the  Popes  from  Zacharias  to  Victor  n.  But  the 
Papacy  was  a  very  intermittent,  uncertain,  and  exacting 
bulwark  of  the  Empire,  and  after  the  advent  of  Hilde- 
brand,  in  the  eleventh  century,  it  was  usually  the  open  or 
secret  enemy  of  the  Empire.  The  Catholic  Church  was 
always  the  co-equal,  usually  the  jealous  rival,  often  the 
irreconcilable  foe  of  the  Emperor.  It  never  was  a  State 


358  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

Church,  and  rarely,  until 'the  fourteenth  century,  was  an 
official  and  obsequious  minister  of  any  emperor  or  king. 

But  the  Orthodox  Church  of  Constantinople,  from  first 
to  last,  was  a  State  Church,  part  of  the  State,  servant  of 
the  State.  There  were,  of  course,  rebel  patriarchs,  ambi- 
tious, independent,  factious,  and  deeply  spiritual  patriarchs. 
There  were  whole  reigns  and  dynasties  when  Emperor  and 
Patriarch  represented  opposite  opinions.  But  all  this  was 
trifling  compared  with  the  independent  and  hostile  atti- 
tude of  the  Papacy  to  the  Temporal  Power.  The  Catholic 
Church  represented  a  Spiritual  Power  independent  of  any 
sovereign,  with  a  range  of  influence  not  conterminous  with 
that  of  any  sovereign.  That  was  its  strength,  its  glory, 
its  menace  to  the  Temporal  Power.  The  Orthodox  Church 
represented  a  spiritual  authority,  the  minister  of  the  sov- 
ereign, directing  the  conscience  of  the  subjects  of  the 
sovereign,  and  in  theory  of  no  others.  The  Orthodox 
Church  was  the  ideal  State  Church,  and  for  a  thousand 
years  it  deeply  affected  the  history  of  the  Byzantine  Em- 
pire for  evil  and  for  good.  It  more  than  realised  Dante's 
dream  in  the  De  Monarchia,  a  dream  which  the  essence  of 
Catholicism  and  the  traditions  of  the  Papacy  made  impos- 
sible in  the  West.  It  constituted  a  real  and  not  a  titular 
Holy  Roman  Empire  in  the  East. 

Ruinous  to  religion,  morality,  and  freedom  as  was  this 
dependence  of  Church  on  the  sovereign,  it  gave  the  sover- 
eign an  immense  and  permanent  strength.  We  can  see 
to-day  what  overwhelming  force  is  given  to  the  rulers  of 
the  two  great  empires  of  Eastern  Europe,  who  are  both 
absolute  heads  of  the  religious  organisation  of  their  re- 
spective dominions.  Now  the  Orthodox  Church  of  the 
Byzantine  Empire  was  a  more  powerful  spiritual  authority 
than  the  Russian  Church,  if  not  quite  so  abject  a  servant 
of  the  Roman  Emperor  as  the  Russian  Church  is  of  the 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.         359 

Czar.  And  it  was  no  doubt  much  more  completely  under 
the  control  of  the  Emperor  than  the  imams  and  softas 
of  Stamboul  are  under  the  control  of  the  Padishah.  The 
Roman  Emperor,  in  spite  of  his  vices,  origin,  or  character, 
even  in  the  midst  of  the  Iconoclast  struggle,  was  invested 
in  the  eyes  of  his  Orthodox  subjects  with  that  sacred  halo 
which  still  surrounds  Czar  and  Sultan,  and  which  is  the 
main  source  of  their  autocratic  power.  It  was  this  sacred 
character,  a  character  which  the  de  facto  Emperor  possessed 
from  the  hour  of  his  coronation  in  St.  Sophia  until  the  day 
when  he  died,  was  deposed,  or  blinded,  which  held  together 
an  empire  of  such  strangely  heterogeneous  elements,  per- 
meated with  such  forces  of  anarchy  and  confusion.  Chris- 
tians in  the  West  contemn,  and  perhaps  with  justice,  the 
servility,  idolatry,  and  formalism  of  the  Greek  priesthood. 
They  may  be  right  when  they  tell  us  that  the  essence  of 
Greek  ritualism  is  only  a  debased  kind  of  paganism.  But 
the  Orthodox  Church  is  still  a  great  political  force  ;  and 
in  the  Byzantine  Empire  it  was  a  political  force  perhaps 
greater  than  any  other  of  which  we  have  extant  examples. 
If,  then,  we  have  to  answer  the  historical  problem  — 
how  was  it  that  the  Roman  Empire  succeeded  in  prolong- 
ing its  existence  for  a  thousand  years  after  its  final  transfer 
to  the  Bosphorus,  in  the  face  of  tremendous  and,  it  seemed, 
insurmountable  difficulties?  —  the  answer  is,  by  a  happy 
combination  of  three  concurrent  forces.  The  first  was 
the  prestige  of  the  name  and  traditions  of  Rome.  The 
second  was  the  wonderful  language  of  Hellas,  and  the 
versatility  and  astuteness  of  the  Greek  genius.  The  third 
was  the  organisation  of  an  Orthodox  Church,  which,  on  the 
one  hand,  had  a  hold  over  the  mass  of  the  people  hardly 
ever  acquired  even  by  the  Church  Catholic,  which,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  willing  to  become  the  faithful  minister 
of  an  empire  that  it  consecrated  and  venerated  as  its 


360  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

supreme  master  on  earth.  In  one  sense  the  empire  was 
not  strictly  Roman,  not  Greek,  not  Holy.  But  by  a  mar- 
vellous combination  of  Roman  tradition,  Greek  genius, 
and  Orthodox  sanctity  it  maintained  itself  erect  for  a 
thousand  years. 

II.    The  Political  Problem. 

The  modern  political  problem  presented  by  Constanti- 
nople is  not  in  the  least  yet  solved  ;  time  has  not  removed 
it ;  and  recent  events  have  not  made  it  easier.  Constanti- 
nople still  remains,  and  ever  must  remain,  one  of  the  most 
important  ports  in  the  whole  world.  In  the  hands  of  a 
great  military  and  naval  power,  it  must  always  be  one  of 
the  most  dominant  capital  cities  in  the  whole  world.  All 
that  Cronstadt  is  in  the  Baltic,  or  Gibraltar  in  the  West- 
ern, or  Toulon  in  the  Northern,  or  Malta  in  the  Southern, 
Mediterranean — all  these  together  and  more — Constan- 
tinople might  be  made  by  a  first-class  power.  Colonel 
F.  V.  Greene,  of  the  United  States  Army,  in  his  Russian 
Campaigns  in  Turkey,  1877—78,  speaking  of  the  first  lines 
of  Turkish  defence,  between  the  Black  Sea  at  Lake  Derkos 
and  the  Sea  of  Marmora,  calls  this  position  (nearly  that  of 
the  wall  of  Anastasius  in  the  fifth  century)  '  a  place  of 
vastly  greater  strength  than  Plevna.'  He  adds  :  '  No 
other  capital  in  the  world  possesses  such  a  line  of  defence, 
and  when  completed,  armed,  and  garrisoned  in  sufficient 
strength  (about  seventy-five  thousand  men),  it  may  fairly 
be  deemed  impregnable,  except  to  a  nation  possessing  a 
navy  capable  of  controlling  the  Black  Sea  and  Sea  of 
Marmora,  and  a  fleet  of  transports  sufficient  to  land  troops 
in  rear  of  its  flanks.'  (Pp.  427,  428.)  That  is  to  say,  in 
the  opinion  of  one  of  the  first  of  living  authorities,  who 
followed  the  Russian  staff  in  the  last  war,  Constantinople 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.         361 

is  practically  impregnable  in  the  hands  of  a  first-class  mili- 
tary and  naval  power. 

But  Constantinople  is  not  merely  impregnable  on  the 
defensive  side,  in  the  hands  of  such  a  power,  but  if  ade- 
quately manned  and  equipped,  it  is  equally  strong  for 
offensive  purposes ;  and,  with  the  Bosphorus  and  the  Hel- 
lespont duly  fortified,  it  would  command  the  Black  Sea, 
the  Sea  of  Marmora,  and  the  ^Egean  Sea.  Much  more 
than  this  :  it  would  practically  dominate  Asia  Minor ;  for, 
as  old  Busbecq  says,  'Constantinople  stands 'in  Europe, 
but  it  faces  Asia.'  It  faces  Asia,  and  it  dominates  Asia 
Minor ;  and,  if  possessed  by  a  first-class  military  and  naval 
power  of  ambitious  and  aggressive  spirit,  the  possession  of 
Constantinople  involves  the  practical  control  of  Asia  Minor, 
of  the  entire  Levant,  and,  but  for  Cyprus  and  Malta,  of 
North  Africa  and  the  whole  Syrian  coast. 

Nor  is  this  all.  In  the  hands  of  a  first-class  military  and 
naval  power,  Constantinople  must  dominate  the  Balkan 
peninsula  and  the  whole  of  Greece.  With  an  impregnable 
capital,  and  the  powerful  navy  which  the  wonderful  marine 
opportunities  of  Constantinople  render  an  inevitable  pos- 
session to  any  great  power,  the  rival  races  and  petty 
kingdoms  of  the  peninsula  would  all  alike  become  mere 
dependencies  or  provinces.  Here,  then,  we  reach  the  full 
limit  of  the  possible  issue.  Turkey  is  now  no  longer  a 
maritime  power  of  any  account.  Her  magnificent  soldiery 
forms  no  longer  a  menace  to  any  European  power,  however 
small ;  and,  if  it  suffices  to  hold  the  lines  of  Constantinople 
on  the  Balkan  side  (which  is  not  absolutely  certain),  it  is 
liable  at  any  moment  to  be  paralysed  by  an  enemy  on  the 
flank  who  could  command  the  Black  Sea  or  the  Sea  of 
Marmora.  Of  course,  the  Bosphorus  has  lost  its  ancient 
importance  as  a  defence  ;  for  a  northern  invader  command- 
ing the  Black  Sea  could  easily  descend  on  the  heights 


362  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

above  Pera,  and  with  Pera  in  the  hands  of  an  enemy, 
Stamboul  is  now  indefensible.  That  is  to  say,  Constanti- 
nople is  no  longer  impregnable,  or  even  defensible,  without 
a  first-class  fleet.  Therefore  neither  Turkey,  nor  Bulgaria, 
nor  Greece,  nor  any  other  small  power,  could  have  any  but 
a  precarious  hold  on  it,  in  the  absence  of  a  very  powerful 
fleet  of  some  ally. 

From  these  conditions  the  following  consequences  result. 
Turkey  can  hold  Constantinople  as  her  capital  with  abso- 
lute security  against  any  minor  power.  She  could  not 
hold  it  against  Russia  having  a  predominant  fleet  in  the 
Black  Sea,  unless  she  received  by  alliance  the  support  of  a 
powerful  navy.  With  the  support  of  a  powerful  fleet,  and 
her  own  reconstituted  army  and  restored  financial  and 
administrative  condition,  she  might  hold  Constantinople 
indefinitely  against  all  the  resources  of  Russia.  It  is  per- 
fectly plain  that  no  minor  power,  even  if  placed  in  Stam- 
boul, could  hold  it  except  by  sufferance ;  certainly  neither 
Bulgaria,  nor  Greece,  nor  Servia,  perhaps  hardly  Austria, 
unless  she  enormously  developed  her  fleet,  and  transformed 
her  entire  empire.  Turkey,  as  planted  at  present  on  the 
Bosphorus,  is  not  a  menace  to  any  other  power.  The 
powers  with  which  she  is  surrounded  are  intensely  jealous 
of  each  other  ;  and  by  race,  religion,  traditions,  and  aspira- 
tions, incapable  of  permanent  amalgamation. 

From  the  national  and  religious  side  the  problem  is  most 
complex  and  menacing.  Even  in  Constantinople  the  Mos- 
lems are  a  minority  of  the  population  ;  and  still  more 
decidedly  so  in  the  other  European  provinces.  But  in 
most  of  the  Asiatic  provinces,  Moslems  are  a  majority, 
and  in  almost  all  they  are  enormously  superior  in  effective 
strength  to  any  other  single  community.  To  put  aside 
Syrians,  Arabs,  Egyptians,  Jews,  and  other  non-Christian 
populations,  there  are,  within  the  more  western  parts  of 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.        363 

the  Turkish  Empire,  Bulgarians,  Greeks,  Albanians,  vari- 
ous Slavonian  peoples,  Armenians,  and  Levantine  Catho- 
lics, not  so  very  unequally  balanced  in  effective  force  and 
national  ambition  ;  all  intensely  averse  to  submit  to  the 
control  of  any  one  amongst  the  rest,  and  unwilling  to 
combine  with  each  other.  Each  watches  the  other  with 
jealousy,  suspicion,  antipathy,  and  insatiable  desire  to 
domineer. 

The  habit  of  five  centuries  and  the  hope  of  ultimate 
triumph  lead  all  of  them  to  submit,  with  continual  out- 
breaks and  outcries,  to  the  qualified  rule  of  the  Turk. 
But  place  any  one  of  this  motley  throng  of  nationalities  in 
the  place  of  the  Sultan,  and  a  general  confusion  would 
arise.  The  Greek  would  not  accept  the  Bulgarian  as  his 
master,  nor  the  Bulgarian  the  Greek  ;  the  Albanians  would 
submit  to  neither ;  the  Armenians  would  seize  the  first 
moment  of  striking  in  for  themselves  ;  and  the  Italian  and 
Levantine  Catholics  would  certainly  assert  their  claims. 
No  one  of  all  those  rival  nationalities,  creeds,  and  popula- 
tions could  for  a  moment  maintain  their  ascendency.  No 
one  of  them  has  the  smallest  title  either  from  tradition, 
numbers,  or  proved  capacity,  to  pretend  to  the  sceptre  of 
the  Bosphorus — and  not  one  of  them  could  hold  it  for  a 
day  against  Russia,  if  she  chose  to  take  it. 

Assume  that  Russia  has  succeeded  Turkey  in  posses- 
sion of  Constantinople,  the  Bosphorus,  and  the  Helles- 
pont. What  is  the  result  ?  She  would  immediately  make 
her  southern  capital  impregnable,  as  Colonel  Greene  says, 
'with  a  line  of  defence  such  as  no  other  capital  in  the 
world  possesses.'  She  would  make  it  stronger  than  Cron- 
stadt  or  Sebastopol,  and  place  there  one  of  the  most 
powerful  arsenals  in  the  world.  With  a  great  navy  in  sole 
command  of  the  Euxine,  the  Bosphorus,  the  Marmora, 
and  the  Hellespont,  with  a  vast  expanse  of  inland  waters 


364  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

within  which  she  could  be  neither  invested  nor  approached 
—  for  nothing  would  be  easier  than  to  make  the  Helles- 
pont absolutely  impassable  —  Russia  would  possess  a  ma- 
rine base  such  as  nothing  else  in  Europe  presents,  such 
as  nothing  in  European  history  records,  except  in  the  days 
of  the  Basilian  dynasty  and  the  Ottoman  Caliphs  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  With  such  an  unequalled  naval  base 
she  would  certainly  require  and  easily  secure  a  further 
marine  arsenal  in  the  Archipelago.  It  is  of  no  conse- 
quence whether  this  was  found  on  the  Greek  or  on  the 
Asiatic  side.  There  are  a  score  of  suitable  points.  An 
island  or  a  port  situated  somewhere  in  the  vEgean  Sea 
between  Besika  Bay  and  the  Cyclades  would  be  a  neces- 
sary adjunct  and  an  easy  acquisition.  With  Russia  hav- 
ing the  sole  command  of  the  seas  that  wash  South-Eastern 
Europe,  dominating  the  whole  south-eastern  seaboard  from 
a  chain  of  arsenals  stretching  from  Sebastopol  to  the 
Greek  Archipelago,  the  entire  condition  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean would  be  transformed  —  let  us  say  at  once  —  the 
entire  condition  of  Europe  would  be  transformed. 

Has  the  British  public  fully  realised  the  enormous 
change  in  the  political  conditions  of  the  whole  Levant 
and  of  Europe  involved  in  the  installation  of  Russia  on 
the  Bosphorus  ?  We  are  accustomed  to  treat  the  settle- 
ment of  the  Ottoman  in  Stamboul  as  a  matter  which  is 
now  of  very  minor  importance.  Why  so  ?  Because  the 
Turk  is  powerless  for  anything  but  precarious  defence, 
under  the  preponderant  menace  of  Russia  on  the  north, 
whilst  he  is  hemmed  in  by  ambitious  and  restless  neigh- 
bours in  his  last  ditch  in  the  Balkan  peninsula.  He  can- 
not fortify  the  Bosphorus  without  Russian  interference ; 
he  cannot  maintain  his  government  in  Crete  without  a  roar 
of  indignation  from  Greece.  He  is  constantly  harried  by 
Bulgarians,  Servians,  Albanians,  Montenegrins,  and  Epi- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.        365 

rots.  He  lives  for  ever  on  the  defensive,  he  menaces  no 
one;  and  no  one  is  afraid  of  him  in  Europe  —  because  he 
has  nothing  in  Europe  but  a  shrunken  province,  and  prac- 
tically no  fleet, 

We  are  accustomed,  again,  to  treat  the  position  of 
Russia  in  the  Balkan  peninsula  as  one  of  influence  more 
or  less  continuous,  but  as  not  practically  affecting  the 
Eastern  Mediterranean  and  its  lands.  Russia  has  not  yet 
effected  any  real  footing  on  the  peninsula.  She  finds  it 
occupied  by  Roumania,  Bulgaria,  Servia,  Austria,  Turkey, 
and  Greece.  Over  these  Russia  exercises  an  intermittent 
influence,  but  never  controls  them  all  at  the  same  time  ; 
and  she  often  finds  one  or  more  of  them  in  direct  opposi- 
tion. Accordingly,  we  do  not  regard  the  Muscovite  as 
dominant  in  the  Balkan  peninsula,  much  less  in  the  Archi- 
pelago. But  place  Russia  on  the  wonderful  throne  of  the 
Bosphorus,  with  the  inevitable  addition  of  Adrianople  and 
the  Maritza  Valley,  at  the  very  least,  in  Southern  Rou- 
melia,  and  the  whole  situation  is  transformed.  The  pos- 
session of  Constantinople  by  Russia,  with  her  enormous 
resources  and  grand  navy,  means  the  control  by  Russia  of 
the  Bosphorus,  the  Marmora,  the  Hellespont,  and,  at  least, 
of  South-Eastern  Roumelia. 

Could  it  stop  there  ?  Would  the  absolute  chief  of  an 
army  of  two  millions  and  a  half,  with  the  third  great  navy 
of  the  world,  fall  into  slumber  in  his  new  and  resplendent 
capital,  rebuild  the  Seraglio,  or  amuse  himself  in  Yildiz 
Kiosk  ?  He  would  immediately  create  the  second  great 
navy  of  the  world,  and  for  all  Mediterranean  purposes  his 
navy  would  be  at  least  the  rival  of  the  first.  How  long 
would  Roumania  and  Bulgaria  remain  their  own  masters 
when  they  found  themselves  between  his  countless  legions 
on  the  Pruth  and  his  great  fleet  in  the  Golden  Horn  ? 
What  would  Servia  say  to  the  change  —  or  Austria  ? 


366  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

Would  the  Albanians  be  content  ?  And  what  would 
become  of  the  Musulmans  in  Roumelia  ?  The  prospect 
opens  at  least  five  or  six  international  imbroglios  with 
knotty  problems  of  race,  religion,  patriotism,  and  political 
sympathies  and  antipathies.  Any  one  of  these  is  enough 
to  cause  a  European  crisis  —  and  even  an  embittered  war. 

In  the  long  run,  though  it  might  be  a  struggle  prolonged 
for  a  century,  Russia  would  in  some  form  or  other  com- 
mand or  control  the  entire  peninsula  from  the  Danube  to 
Cape  Matapan  ;  not,  perhaps,  counting  it  all  strictly  in 
Russian  territory,  but  being  dominant  therein  as  is  Vic- 
toria in  the  Indian  peninsula.  The  geographical  conditions 
of  Constantinople  are  so  extraordinary  ;  they  offer  such 
boundless  opportunities  to  a  first-class  military  and  naval 
power ;  they  lie  so  curiously  ready  to  promote  the  ambi- 
tion of  Russia,  that  the  advent  of  the  Czar  to  the  capital 
of  the  Sultan  would  produce  a  change  in  Europe  greater 
than  any  witnessed  in  the  nineteenth  century.  The  abso- 
lute monarch  of  a  hundred  millions,  with  an  army  of  two 
and  a  half  millions,  possessing  sole  command  of  the  Black 
Sea,  Bosphorus,  Marmora,  and  Hellespont,  together  with 
the  incomparable  naval  basis  which  is  afforded  by  this 
chain  of  four  inland  seas,  would  unquestionably  be  supreme 
master  of  the  whole  of  Eastern  Europe,  which  would  then 
extend  under  one  sceptre  from  the  Arctic  Ocean  to  the 
Greek  Archipelago. 

But  this  is  only  one-half  of  the  political  problem,  and 
perhaps  the  less  difficult  half.  There  is  the  Asiatic  side  to 
the  problem,  as  well  as  the  European  side.  Place  the  Czar 
in  the  Seraglio  and  what  is  to  become  of  the  Padishah  ? 
Is  he  to  retire  to  Scutari  in  his  barge,  and  to  restore  the 
palace  of  Selim,  which  we  know  as  hospital  and  barracks  ? 
Is  he  to  withdraw  to  Brusa  or  Smyrna,  or  retire  at  once 
to  Aleppo  or  Damascus  ?  How  long  will  the  Russian  be 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  CONSTANTINOPLE.        367 

content  to  watch  across  the  sea  the  minarets  in  Bithynia 
and  the  mountains  of  Anatolia,  to  look  upon  Abydos  from 
Sestos  without  a  desire  to  pay  a  visit  to  his  secular  rival  ? 
Politicians  talk  with  a  light  heart  of  hastening  the  depar- 
ture of  the  Moslem  from  Europe.  But  what  do  they  pro- 
pose for  him  when  he  is  withdrawn  into  Asia  ?  With  the 
Czar  at  Kars,  and  under  Ararat,  at  Constantinople  and 
Gallipoli,  commanding  the  whole  northern  coast  of  Asia 
Minor  from  Batum  to  Besika  Bay,  with  the  Armenians 
raging  on  the  East  and  the  Greeks  and  Levantine  Chris- 
tians on  the  West  the  Sultan  will  hardly  rest  more  tran- 
quilly in  Brusa  than  he  does  to-day  in  Yildiz  Kiosk.  Are 
the  millions  of  Musulmans  in  Asia  Minor  to  be  extermi- 
nated or  driven  across  the  Euphrates  ?  What  is  to  be  the 
end  of  this  interminable  Turkish  problem,  and  is  the 
twentieth  century  to  install  a  new  crusade  ? 

All  these  things  are,  no  doubt,  very  distant  and  entirely 
uncertain.  But  they  are  possible  enough,  and  would  give 
the  statesmen  of  the  future  a  series  of  insoluble  problems. 
It  would  be  needless  to  enlarge  on  the  endless  complica- 
tions they  involve.  They  may  serve  to  convince  us  that 
there  is  no  finality  in  this  Turkish  question.  The  expul- 
sion of  the  Turk  from  Europe  leaves  the  dilemma  more 
acute  than  ever.  The  enthronement  of  the  Russian  on 
the  Bosphorus  settles  nothing,  concludes  nothing,  and  can 
satisfy  no  one.  It  offers,  on  the  contrary,  a  new  set  of 
difficulties  and  contests,  more  ominous  and  bitter  than 
those  which  have  raged  for  a  hundred  years  since  Cath- 
erine II. 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

PARIS    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY. 

OF  historic  cities  in  Europe  of  the  first  rank  we  can 
count  but  four :  Rome,  Constantinople,  Paris,  London. 
For  in  the  first  rank  of  historic  cities  we  can  only  place 
those  capitals  which  have  been,  continuously  and  over  a 
long  succession  of  ages,  the  seats  of  national  movements 
dominating  the  history  of  Europe  :  cities  which  have  been 
conspicuous  in  mass,  in  central  place,  and  in  vast  extent  of 
time.  Rome  first,  Constantinople  next,  stand  far  before 
all  other  European  cities  in  fulfilling  these  conditions :  but 
after  them  come  Paris  and  London.  Such  fascinating  cities 
as  Athens,  Florence,  Venice,  Rouen,  Cologne,  Treves, 
Prague,  or  Oxford  —  are  all  either  far  inferior  in  size  and 
national  importance,  or  else  have  known  their  epochs  of 
glory  only  to  die  away  for  ages  into  small  and  local  pre- 
eminence. Of  all  great  capitals  in  the  world,  London  has 
perhaps,  during  twelve  centuries,  suffered  the  least  from 
violent  shocks,  from  war  and  breaks  in  its  history  ;  and  it 
may  be  said  to  retain  the  most  complete  and  continuous 
monumental  record  for  that  period. 

In  the  modern  world,  Paris  is  the  only  capital  which  can 
be  placed  beside  London  as  an  historic  city  of  the  first 
rank.  The  modern  transformation  of  Paris  has  been  even 
more  destructive  of  the  past  than  the  modern  transforma- 
tion of  London,  and,  at  the  same  time,  it  is  much  more 
brilliant :  so  that  what  remains  of  the  historic  city  is  much 
more  completely  screened  and  overpowered  in  Paris  than 

368 


PARIS    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  369 

it  is  in  London.  Nor  has  Paris  any  ancient  monuments 
which  appeal  to  the  popular  imagination,  with  such  direct 
voice  as  do  our  Abbey,  and  our  great  hall  at  Westminster, 
our  Tower,  our  Temple  Church,  Lambeth  Palace,  and  the 
Guildhall.  Yet  withal  it  may  be  said  that,  in  a  larger 
sense  of  the  term,  Paris  is  a  city  of  even  richer  historic 
memories  than  London  itself :  richer,  that  is,  to  the 
thoughtful  student  of  its  history,  though  certainly  not  to 
the  incurious  tourist.  If  we  take  into  account  sites  as  well 
as  extant  monuments,  if  we  call  to  our  aid  topography  as 
well  as  archaeology ;  if  we  follow  up  the  early  history  of 
buildings  which  have  been  replaced,  or  are  now  transformed 
or  removed ;  if  we  study  the  local  biography  of  Paris  from 
the  days  of  Julius  Caesar  to  the  days  of  Julius  Grevy  and 
Sadi  Carnot — especially,  if  we  include  in  the  history  of 
Paris  that  of  its  suburbs  —  St.  Denis,  Vincennes,  St.  Cloud, 
St.  Germain,  Versailles,  —  then  the  history  of  Paris  is 
even  richer,  more  dramatic,  more  continuous  than  that  of 
London  itself. 

Paris  is  by  at  least  a  century  older  than  London  in  the 
historical  record  ;  for  it  now  has  almost  two  thousand 
years  of  continuous  annals.  Paris  was  a  more  important 
Roman  city  than  London.  It  has  far  more  extensive 
Roman  remains.  The  history  of  its  first  thousand  years, 
from  the  first  century  to  the  eleventh,  of  its  early  founda- 
tions, churches,  palaces,  and  walls,  is  far  more  complete 
and  trustworthy  than  anything  we  know  of  London.  It 
did  not  suffer  any  such  gap  or  blank  in  its  history,  such  as 
that  which  befell  London,  from  the  time  of  the  Romans 
until  the  settlement  of  the  Saxons.  The  fathers  of  men 
still  living  have  seen  at  Paris,  in  its  Bastille,  at  St.  Denis, 
in  Notre  Dame,  and  the  other  churches,  in  the  Tuileries, 
in  Versailles,  and  old  Hdtel  de  Ville,  relics  of  the  past, 
records,  works  of  art,  tombs,  and  statues,  before  which 
2  A 


3/O  THE   CITY    IN   HISTORY. 

the  great  record  of  our  Abbey  and  our  Tower  can  hardly 
hold  their  own. 

The  great  era  of  destruction  began  little  more  than  a 
century  ago  :  the  great  era  of  restoration  little  more  than 
half  a  century  ago.  Paris,  too,  has  been  the  scene  of 
events  more  tremendous  and  more  extraordinary  than  any 
other  city  of  the  world,  if  we  except  Constantinople  and 
Rome.  London  never  endured  any  very  serious  or  regular 
siege.  Paris  has  endured  a  dozen  famous  sieges,  culminat- 
ing in  what  is,  perhaps,  the  biggest  siege  recorded  in 
history.  London  has  never  known  an  autocrat  with  a 
passion  for  building,  has  had  but  one  great  conflagration, 
and  but  one  serious  insurrection.  Paris  has  had  in  Louis 
xiv.,  and  the  first  and  second  empires  of  the  Napoleons, 
three  of  the  most  ambitious  despots  ever  known  ;  and  in  a 
hundred  years  has  had  four  most  sanguinary  and  destruc- 
tive revolutions.  Battles,  sieges,  massacres,  conflagrations, 
civil  wars,  rebellions,  revolutions,  make  up  the  history  of 
Paris  from  the  days  of  the  Caesars  and  the  Franks  to  the 
days  of  the  Terror  and  the  Commune. 

All  this  makes  the  topographical  history  of  Paris  far 
more  copious  and  more  stirring  than  the  history  of  London, 
and  indeed  of  any  other  modern  city  whatever.  And  the 
history  of  Paris  has  been  far  better  told  than  the  history 
of  any  other  city.  There  is  a  perfect  library  about  the 
history  of  Paris,  with  a  special  Museum,  and  a  collection 
of  80,000  volumes  and  70,000  engravings,  devoted  to  that 
one  subject.  The  histories  reach  over  six  centuries,  from 
the  work  of  Jean  de  Jandun,  the  contemporary  of  Dante, 
who  begins  his  work  about  Paris  by  saying '  that  it  is  more 
like  Paradise  than  any  other  spot  on  earth  '  —  (an  opinion, 
by  the  way,  said  to  be  shared  by  many  Americans  and 
some  English)  —  and  they  go  on  to  the  splendid  volumes 
by  Hoffbauer,  Fournier,  and  others,  called  Paris  a  travers 


PARIS    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  371 

les  Ages:  a  book,  I  may  say,  only  to  be  found  in  the 
British  Museum  and  a  few  public  libraries.  Till  the  ap- 
pearance of  Mr.  Loftie's  History  of  London  (2  vols.  1883), 
we  had  not  a  single  scholarly  history  of  our  great  city. 
But  for  more  than  two  centuries  there  have  been  produced 
a  long  series  of  works  on  the  topography  and  monuments 
of  Paris.  And  we  have  now  a  splendid  series  of  treatises 
issued  by  the  Municipal  Council,  the  Histoire  Ge'ntrale  de 
Paris,  begun  in  1865.  When  I  was  on  the  London  County 
Council,  I  endeavoured  to  induce  the  Council  to  undertake 
a  similar  work  for  London  ;  but  I  found  that,  with  an  annual 
expenditure  of  some  two  millions,  the  Municipality  of  Lon- 
don had  no  power  to  expend  a  penny  on  such  an  object.1 

1  Amongst  other  valuable  books  of  history  and  illustration  are:  Androuet 
du  Cerceau,  Les  plus  excellent!  Bastiments  de  France,  2  vols.  fol.  Paris,  1576. 

Israel  Silvestre,   Views  in  old  Paris,  fol.     Paris,  1665. 

Perelle,  Les  delices  de  Paris,  fol.     Paris,  1763. 

Piganiol,  Description  de  Paris.     Paris,  1742. 

Dulaure,  Histoire  de  Paris,  10  vols.  8vo.  Paris  (2nd  ed.),  1823,  with 
views  and  maps. 

De  Guilhermy,  Itineraire  archeologique  de  Paris,  1855. 

Lacroix,  Curiosites  de  la  Ville  de  Paris. 

Pernot,  Le  Vieux  Paris,  fol.     1838. 

A.  P.  Martial,  Ancien  Paris,  a  series  of  300  etchings.     Paris,  fol.  1 866. 

D.  R.  Rochette,  Souvenirs  du  Vieux  Paris.     Paris,  1836,  fol. 

Destailleurs  (Hippolyte),  Recueil  d\Estampes.  Paris,  fol.  1863,  repro- 
ductions. 

C.  Chastillon,  Topographie  Franfaise,  1612. 

J.  B.  Rigaud,  Recueil  Choisi,  1750. 

P.  G.  Hamerton,  Paris,  Old  and  New,  410, 1885. 

Albert  Lenoir,  Statistique  Afonumentale  de  Paris,  1861-1875. 

S.  Sophia  Beale,  The  Churches  of  Paris  from   Clovis  to  Charles  X.,  8vo, 

1893- 

The  Publications  of  the  Societe  de  Phistoire  de  Paris,  annual  volumes, 
1874-1894. 

For  purely  popular  books  there  are,  Old  and  New  Paris,  by  Sutherland 
Edwards,  now  publishing  by  Cassell  and  Co.  in  parts,  1893-94. 

A.  Hare,  Paris  1887;  and,  lastly,  there  is  a  fair  historical  account  in 
Joanne's  illustrated  popular  Guide  to  Paris. 


372  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

With  all  this  prodigious  wealth  of  historic  record  beneath 
our  feet  as  we  tread  over  old  Paris,  how  little  do  we  think 
of  any  part  of  it,  as  we  stroll  about  new  Paris  of  to-day. 
We  lounge  along  the  boulevards,  the  quays  and  'places/ 
with  thoughts  intent  on  galleries  and  gardens,  theatres  and 
shops,  thinking  as  little  of  the  past  history  of  the  ground 
we  tread  as  a  fly  crawling  over  a  picture  by  Raphael  thinks 
of  high  art.  Haussmann,  and  the  galleries,  the  Boule- 
vards, and  the  opera  smother  up  the  story  of  Paris,  much 
as  a  fair  with  its  booth,  scaffoldings,  and  advertisements 
masks  the  old  buildings  round  some  mediaeval  market-place. 
Ceci  tiiera  cela,  said  Victor  Hugo  of  the  book  and  the 
Cathedral.  No  !  it  is  not  the  book  which  has  killed  old 
Paris.  It  is  Haussmann  and  his  imitators,  the  architect- 
ural destroyers,  restorers,  and  aesthetic  Huns  and  Vandals. 
Not  that  we  deny  to  Haussmannised  Paris  some  delightful 
visions,  many  brilliant,  some  even  beautiful  effects.  But 
to  most  foreign  visitors,  and  perhaps  to  most  modern 
Parisians,  Haussmann  has  buried  old  Paris  both  actually 
and  morally  —  hiding  it  behind  a  screen,  disguising  it  with 
new  imitation  work,  or  dazzling  the  eye  till  it  loses  all  sense 
of  beauty  in  the  old  work. 

The  effort  to  recall  old  Paris  when  we  stand  in  new  Paris 
certainly  imposes  a  strain  on  the  imagination'.  When  we 
stand  on  some  bright  morning  in  early  summer  in  the 
Place  de  la  Concorde  whilst  all  is  gaiety  and  life,  children 
playing  in  the  gardens,  the  fountains  sparkling  in  the  sun, 
and  long  vistas  of  white  stone  glistening  in  the  light,  with 
towers,  spires,  terraces,  and  bridges  in  long  perspective, 
and  the  golden  cross  high  over  the  dome  of  the  Invalides, 
it  is  not  easy  to  recall  the  aspect  of  the  spot  we  stand  on 
when  it  was  soaked  with  the  blood  of  the  victims  of  the 
guillotine  from  King  and  Queen  to  Madame  Roland  and 
Charlotte  Corday ;  we  forget  that  every  tower  and  terrace 


PARIS   AS   AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  373 

we  look  on  has  resounded  to  the  roar  of  cannon  and  the 
shouts  of  battle,  with  fire  and  smoke,  with  all  the  forces 
of  destruction  and  all  the  passions  of  hell  —  not  once  or 
twice  but  repeatedly  for  a  century;  nay,  how  the  same 
scenes  of  carnage  and  of  battle  have  raged  through  Revo- 
lution and  Fronde,  League  and  St.  Bartholomew,  and 
English  wars  and  feudal  faction  fights  back  to  the  days  of 
Counts  of  Paris,  and  Franks,  Huns,  Gauls,  and  Romans. 
And  after  all  these  storms,  the  city  still  smiles  on  us  as  a 
miracle  of  gaiety,  brightness,  industry,  and  culture,  keep- 
ing some  scar,  or  remnant,  or  sign  of  every  tempest  it  has 
witnessed. 

It  has  happened  to  us  at  times  to  stand  on  some  beauti- 
ful coast  on  one  of  those  lovely  days  which  succeed  a  storm, 
when  ripples  dance  along  the  blue  and  waveless  sea,  whilst 
the  glassy  water  gently  laps  the  pebbled  beach,  and  yet 
but  a  few  hours  before  we  have  seen  that  same  coast  lashed 
into  foam,  whilst  wild  billows  swept  into  the  abyss  precious 
things  and  priceless  lives  of  men.  So  I  often  think  Paris 
looks  in  its  brightness  and  calm  a  few  short  years  after  one 
of  her  convulsions  ;  fulfilling  her  ancient  motto — fiuctuat 
nee  mergitur.  Her  bark  rides  upon  every  billow  and  does 
not  sink.  Fresh  triumphs  of  industry  and  art  and  knowl- 
edge follow  upon  her  wildest  storm. 

It  is  the  history,  not  the  present  aspect  of  Paris,  that 
is  my  present  subject.  I  can  remember  Paris  before 
the  second  empire  began,  before  the  new  Boulevards,  the 
strategical  avenues,  the  interminable  strait  lines  and  the 
mechanical  restorations  of  the  last  forty  years  ;  I  can 
recall  Paris  in  the  days  when  it  was  for  the  most  part  a 
labyrinth  of  narrow,  short,  and  often  winding  streets,  with 
the  sombre  impasses,  the  irregular  courts,  and  vistas  of 
gable,  attic,  cornice,  and  turret  that  Meryon  loved  so  well, 
and  which  Israel  Silvestre  has  recorded  with  such  patient 


374  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

care,  and  here  and  there  a  Gothic  fragment  in  the  simple 
state  of  natural  decay  and  gradual  incrustation.  Since 
then  I  have  watched  for  forty  years  the  process  of  demo- 
lition and  of  restoration  —  the  destruction,  construction, 
reconstruction,  on  which  such  enormous  sums,  so  much 
energy  and  skill,  have  been  bestowed.  I  will  try  to  avoid 
the  dangerous  field  of  art,  of  archaeology,  of  criticism  and 
taste,  treading  my  way  warily  per  ignes  suppositos  cineri 
doloso.  I  will  offer  no  opinion  on  these  high  matters  of 
aesthetic  judgment.  Let  every  man  and  woman  judge  for 
himself  and  herself  whether  new  Paris  be  more  beautiful 
than  old  Paris,  if  Haussmann  had  a  finer  genius  than 
Pierre  de  Montereau  and  Philibert  Delorme,  if  symmetrical 
boulevards  and  spacious  avenues  are  a  nobler  sight  than 
picturesque  alleys  —  how  far  old  buildings  in  decay  should 
be  'restored,'  and  if  it  is  good  to  sweep  away  whole 
parishes,  churches,  halls,  mansions,  and  streets  by  the 
dozen,  in  order  to  make  a  barrack  or  a  'place?  There  is 
much  to  be  said  on  both  sides  of  the  question  :  but  I  shall 
hold  my  peace  on  these  profound  aesthetic  problems,  for  it 
is  safer  to  interfere  as  arbiter  in  a  dog-fight  than  to  venture 
as  umpire  into  the  battle  of  the  styles.  My  task  is  the 
plainer  and  humbler  one  of  topography  and  the  historic 
record.  And  my  historic  interests  are  impartial.  I  am 
seeking  only  to  identify  all  memorable  events  of  the  past 
with  their  true  local  association.  To  my  mind,  the  historic 
record  covers  all  memorable  things,  all  conspicuous  names 
in  the  long  evolution  of  the  ages. 

I  have  in  Paris  an  old  and  learned  friend  who  for  fifty 
years  has  lived  in  Paris,  studied  Paris,  loved  Paris,  as  only 
a  Parisian  can  love  his  own  city.  His  habit  is  to  read 
every  book  he  can  meet  with  that  relates  to  the  topography 
of  Paris,  and  then  he  walks  about  and  verifies  what  he 
reads  on  the  spot.  I  often  stroll  about  the  city  with  my 


PARIS    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  3/5 

friend  and  listen  to  him  as  he  pours  out  volumes  of  topo- 
graphic lore.  We  pass  through  the  modern  screen  of 
Haussmannic  Paris  :  we  leave  the  boulevards  and  their 
roar,  and  in  a  moment  we  are  again  in  the  old  world  of  the 
eighteenth  or  seventeenth  century  ;  just  as  when  we  turn 
out  from  Victoria  Street  into  Deans'  Yard  and  the  Abbey 
Cloister.  So  in  Paris  we  pass  swiftly  beneath  a  portal  and 
the  roar  ceases.  The  modern  streets,  to  which  our  tourists 
confine  their  walks,  form  after  all  only  a  gigantic  screen 
behind  which  much  of  old  Paris  still  remains  untouched. 

'  Here/  said  my  old  friend  to  me  but  a  few  years  ago, 
'in  this  quiet  street,  the  Rue  cC Argenteuil,  with  the  rickety 
cour  d'honneur,  the  bit  of  greenery  and  the  bust,  is  the 
house  where  Corneille  lived  and  died ;  close  by,  in  the  Rue 
St.  Anne,  is  the  house  where  Bossuet  died.'  Both  houses 
lay  in  streets  between  the  Rue  St.  Honor/  and  the  new 
Avenue  de  r Opera:  both  have  now  disappeared.  '  Come,' 
said  he,  '  into  St.  Rock.  Here  is  the  simple  tomb  of 
Corneille  who  lies  beneath  our  feet ;  a  medallion  is  all  his 
monument  ;  a  little  further  on  is  an  inscription  to  the 
memory  of  Bossuet.'  And  as  we  pass  down  the  steps  of 
the  church,  '  Here,'  he  says,  '  was  the  famous  battle  between 
Bonaparte,  the  young  soldier  of  the  Convention,  and  the 
sections  of  Lepelletier,  the  counter  Revolution  of  1795.' 
It  was  Carlyle's  famous  '  whiff  of  grapeshot,'  which  he 
oddly  enough  supposed  to  have  closed  the  Revolution. 
Carlyle  declares  that  the  traces  of  the  balls  are  visible  on 
the  fa9ade  of  the  church  :  but  they  seem  to  have  disap- 
peared now. 

'  And  now,'  he  would  say, '  come  and  see  the  fruit  in  the 
March/  St.  Honor/.  On  that  spot  opposite  stood  the 
Library  of  the  Dominican  order  of  monks  called  Jacobins; 
the  Library  was  dedicated  to  the  Dauphin,  on  the  day  of 
his  birth,  1638.  That  Dauphin,  the  son  of  Louis  xin., 


3/6  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

born  under  the  rule  of  Richelieu,  was  Louis  xiv.  At  the 
Revolution  the  Library  was  hired  by  the  political  club 
called  the  "  Friends  of  the  Constitution."  But  these  con- 
stitutional friends  ended  in  friends  of  Robespierre  and 
Marat ;  and  thus  the  Library  of  the  Dominican  monks,  dedi- 
cated in  servile  terms  to  Louis  xiv.  under  the  auspices  of 
Richelieu,  has  given  its  name  in  all  modern  languages  to 
sanguinary  revolution.' 

And  now  let  us  make  our  way,  still  keeping  behind  the 
screen  of  the  new  avenues,  to  the  quaint  old  Place  des 
Victoires,  where  the  gilt  statue  in  the  centre,  once  dedi- 
cated viro  immortali  —  to  the  'grand  monarque  ' — has 
undergone  in  the  last  hundred  years  as  many  changes  as 
the  successive  governments  of  France,  out  of  which  the 
1  great  king '  has  at  last  returned  to  his  original  place. 
And  so  we  come  to  St.  Eustache,  that  senigma  in  the 
history  of  art,  a  Gothic  Church  built  by  Renascence  artists 
in  a  wonderful  medley  of  two  different  styles ;  and  we  pass 
in  to  look  at  the  grand  tomb  of  the  great  Colbert. 

Thus  we  cross  over  to  the  vast  Halles  Centrales,  and 
thence  to  the  delightful  March/  aux  Innocents,  with  the 
fountain  of  Pierre  Lescot  and  Jean  Goujon  —  to  my  mind, 
at  least  in  its  original  form,  the  most  perfect  work  of  the 
Renascence  —  now  it  is  much  transformed,  but  still  in 
effect  most  lovely.  For  my  part,  I  prefer  the  second  of 
the  three  shapes  which  the  fountain  has  received  within 
the  present  century.  In  that  old  Marche  aux  Innocents  I 
loved  on  a  bright  summer  day  to  sit  for  hours,  listening  to 
the  splash  of  the  fountain  and  the  gay  voices  of  the  chil- 
dren at  play.  It  used  to  be  a  bit  of  old  Paris  :  and  worthy, 
with  its  colour,  warmth,  and  varied  perspective,  to  rank 
with  a  market-place  in  Verona  or  Genoa.  Close  by,  in  the 
small  street  de  la  Ferronnerie,  then  much  narrower,  Henry 
iv.  was  assassinated  by  Ravaillac ;  and  on  the  spot  where 


PARIS   AS   AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  377 

we  stand  was  the  grim  burial-ground  and  charnel-house  of 
the  Church  of  the  Innocents.  Quite  close  by,  across  the 
new  Rue  de  Rivoli,  was  the  house  of  Coligny  where  he 
was  murdered  in  the  St.  Bartholomew.  In  the  Rue  St. 
Denis  is  one  of  the  houses  in  which  Moliere  (Poquelin)  was 
said  to  have  been  born.  He  certainly  died  in  No.  34  Rue 
de  Richelieu,  opposite  the  fountain  which  bears  his  name. 

Then  we  pass  across  to  the  old  city,  the  original  Lutetia, 
the  Paris  of  Julius  Caesar,  of  Julian,  of  Clovis,  and  Hugh 
Capet.  There  on  the  quay  beside  the  apse  of  Notre  Dame 
we  stop  to  mark  the  spot  where  stood  the  house  of  Canon 
Fulbert  where  Abailard  knew,  taught,  and  loved  Helo'fse, 
and  then  we  wander  on  to  what  once  was  Rue  du  Fouarre, 
now  almost  swamped  in  the  new  Rue  Monge,  where  stood 
the  old  school  of  Theology  and  Arts.  Dante  calls  the 
street  vico  degli  strami ;  and  he  records  Sigier,  the  famous 
doctor  who  taught  there  ;  and  some  have  supposed  that  he 
actually  lodged  in  this  spot.  Another  suggestion  ( which 
has  high  authority)  is  that  from  that  spot  he  could  watch 
the  South  Rose  Window  in  the  transept  of  Notre  Dame, 
which  suggested  to  him  the  idea  of  the  Celestial  Rose  of 
Paradise.  Thus  my  old  friend  and  I  are  wont  to  saunter 
on  talking  of  the  schools  of  Paris,  which  for  several  cen- 
turies have  played  so  vast  a  part  in  the  history  of  France 
and  of  Europe,  and  which  during  the  twelfth  and  thir- 
teenth centuries  were  the  main  intellectual  centre  of  the 
West.  And  we  look  in  at  the  Sorbonne  to  see  the  fine 
tomb  of  Richelieu  in  his  church,  which  has  the  earliest 
dome  ever  built  in  Paris,  or  we  stand  for  a  moment  before 
the  well-known  house  on  the  Quai  Voltaire,  where  the 
literary  dictator  of  the  eighteenth  century  died  in  the 
plenitude  of  his  fame. 

Thus  we  stroll  on  to  the  Boulevard  St.  Germain,  and  at 
the  corner  of  the  Rue  Bonaparte  we  drop  in  at  the  old 


378  THE    CITY   IN    HISTORY. 

church  of  St.  Get-main  des  Pres,  to  the  historian  one  of  the 
most  memorable  in  Europe,  for  its  foundation  dates  from 
thirteen  centuries  ago,  and  parts  of  what  we  see  are  far 
older  than  any  church  in  London.  There,  with  fragments 
of  Merovingian  building,  we  find  the  tomb  of  the  greatest 
of  modern  philosophers  —  Rene  Descartes.  And  as  we 
come  into  the  quarter  of  the  Ecole  de  Medicine  (a  little 
below  the  square  of  the  Odeon,  between  it  and  the  Boule- 
vard St.  Michel], '  here/  says  my  friend,  '  is  the  "  terre  sainte 
de  la  Revolution," '  and  he  takes  off  his  hat  as  a  mark  of 
respect,  for  he  is  a  republican  of  the  type  of  old  Carnot, 
but  in  no  sense  a  Jacobin.  Then  we  come  to  the  Mus/e 
Dnpuytren,  the  surgical  museum  of  Paris,  formerly  the 
refectory  of  the  convent  of  the  Cordeliers  friars,  of  the 
Franciscan  order,  and  in  the  revolution  the  Cordelier  club 
of  Danton  and  Camille  Desmoulins.  Strange  that  the 
garb  designed  in  the  thirteenth  century  by  the  blessed 
St.  Francis  to  express  humility  and  love  —  the  rough  belt 
of  cord  —  should  become  in  the  eighteenth  century  the 
synonym  of  passionate  terrorism.  A  little  further  off  was 
the  house  where  Danton  lodged  and  thus  his  statue  is  now 
placed  beside  it.  My  friend  knew  the  nephew  of  Danton, 
who  remembered  the  great  tribune.  And  close  by,  I  have 
had  pointed  out  to  me  the  house  where  Charlotte  Corday 
stabbed  Marat  in  his  bath.  'There,'  said  my  friend  once, 
'in  the  terrible  days  of  May,  1871,  against  that  baker's 
shop,  I  saw  as  he  lay  dead  in  his  gore  the  body  of  poor 
Jules  —  an  excellent  soul  but  a  flighty — and  for  three  days 
no  one  dared  to  touch  or  remove  it.' 

Somewhat  higher  up  the  hill,  just  above  the  Sorbonne, 
we  came  upon  a  dingy  little  inn  in  a  back  street.  There 
is  a  Hotel  (then  called  St.  Quentin)  where  J.  J.  Rousseau 
first  stopped  when  he  arrived  in  Paris,  and  there  he  first 
saw  his  wife,  Therese  Levasseur,  who  was  a  servant  maid 


PARIS    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  379 

there  ;  the  story  is  told  well  in  the  Rousseau  of  Mr.  John 
Morley.  And  we  wander  up  the  hill  to  the  old  St.  Etienne 
du  Motit,  that  strange  potpourri  of  Renascence,  Gothic,  and 
classical  bits  ;  and  there  we  search  for  the  tombs  of  Racine 
and  of  Pascal,  the  body  and  monument  of  Racine  having 
been  removed  from  the  old  Port  Royal,  where  he  was  orig- 
inally laid,  to  be  placed  here  beside  Pascal. 

Pascal  lived  and  died  close  by  this  St.  Etienne  du  Mont. 
I  shall  never  forget  the  effect  on  my  mind  when  one  day 
sauntering  up  the  hill  from  the  Luxembourg  garden  to  the 
observatory,  I  saw  an  old  and  dingy  building  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  now  a  women's  hospital.  '  What  is  that  ? ' 
I  asked.  'That,'  said  my  friend,  'is  the  Port  Royal  of 
Paris,  a  dependance  of  the  central  Port  Royal  des  Champs, 
and  it  was  spared  when  the  great  seat  of  Jansenism  was 
destroyed.  What  you  see  is  the  house  where  Soeur  Ange"- 
lique  and  the  Arnauds  removed  for  peace,  which  sheltered 
the  Jansenists  during  twenty-five  years  of  their  most  brill- 
iant time.  There  Pascal  met  the  Arnauds  ;  there  often 
came  also  Racine  in  his  later  years  of  theological  mysti- 
cism.' It  is  the  only  surviving  monument  of  that  wonder- 
ful movement  in  France  that  we  know  as  Jansenism. 

That  is  the  historic  way  of  seeing  Paris.  But  how 
many  thousands  of  our  tourists  believe  they  know  Paris  as 
well  as  London,  and  have  exhausted  all  its  sights,  and 
hurry  through  Paris,  and  yet  they  could  not  tell  where  the 
Convention  had  its  hall,  or  how  it  came  there,  or  where 
the  bones  of  king  and  queen  and  the  other  victims  of  the 
guillotine  were  laid,  and  why  they  were  thrown  in  that  spot, 
or  where  the  guillotine  stood  :  nor  have  they  seen  the  cells 
where  Marie  Antoinette  and  Danton,  Vergniaud  and  the 
Girondins  passed  their  last  hours  —  or  could  distinguish 
the  parts  of  the  Louvre,  or  tell  for  whom  the  many  L's  and 
H's  and  M's  are  inscribed  —  or  where  our  Henry  v.  lived 


380  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

when  he  was  ruler  of  France  after  Azincourt,  and  where 
was  the  Palace  of  St.  Louis,  or  of  Philip  Augustus,  or  Clovis, 
or  the  original  Lutetia  of  the  Parisii. 

Let  us  try  to  group  the  record  of  Paris  in  historic  epochs 
and  in  their  right  chronological  order. 

It  is  easy  to  realise  the  Lutetia  of  the  Romans,  the  first 
Gaulish  settlement.  Loukhteith,  its  Celtic  name,  is  said 
to  mean  'the  stronghold  in  the  morass,' — not  'mud-city,' 
as  Carlyle  calls  it,  —  nearly  the  same  as  Llyn-dyn,  or  Lon- 
don, which  means  the  Lake-town.  The  island  (or  eyot  as 
we  say  in  the  Thames),  in  the  Seine  a  little  below  the 
junction  of  the  Marne,  where  the  Bievre  flows  into  the 
Seine,  formed  an  excellent  fastness.  Caesar  has  given  a 
vivid  account  of  the  siege  of  Paris  in  52  B.C.,  and  from 
the  top  of  the  Pantlieon  we  can  stand  and  trace  the  cam- 
paign of  Labienus,  as  told  by  the  mighty  general  of  Rome. 
The  historic  record  of  Paris  thus  begins  1946  years  ago. 
It  was  a  city  of  some,  but  not  of  great  importance  in  the 
Roman  Empire,  its  most  famous  incident  being  that  it  was 
the  favourite  residence  of  the  Emperor  Julian  in  the  middle 
of  the  fourth  century.  In  a  well-known  passage  in  his 
Misopogon,  he  speaks  of  his  dear  Lutetia,  of  its  soft  and 
delightful  climate,  and  the  richness  of  its  vines. 

There  is  something  strangely  suggestive  in  the  associa- 
tion of  Paris  with  the  brilliant,  philosophical,  wrongheaded 
young  Caesar,  with  his  paradoxical  ideals,  romantic  adven- 
tures, and  tragic  end. 

It  is  well  known  that  the  grand  Roman  remains  called 
Les  Thermes,  adjoining  the  Cluny  Museum,  belonged  to  the 
palace  of  the  Caesars,  the  great  hall  forming  the  frigi- 
dariinn  of  the  Baths,  and  the  rest  of  the  foundations  have 
been  fairly  made  out.  Other  Roman  remains  are  the  altar 
found  under  Notre  Dame,  many  altars  and  tombs,  both 
Pagan  and  Christian,  a  large  collection  of  objects  in  the 


PARIS    AS   AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  381 

Carnavalet  Museum,  some  remains  of  city  walls  of  the 
fourth  century,  the  famous  inscription  of  the  nautae  or 
watermen's  gild  of  Paris,  two  aqueducts,  that  of  Arcueil 
on  the  south  near  Bicetre,  and  that  of  Ckaillot  near  the 
Palais  Royal,  an  amphitheatre,  east  of  the  Pantheon  near 
the  R.  Monge,  a  second  palace  beneath  the  Conciergerie, 
several  cemeteries  and  tombs,  in  the  R.  Vivicnne  on  the 
north,  and  also  in  the  south,  a  Roman  camp,  a  factory  of 
pottery,  a  mass  of  antiquities  at  Montmartre,  the  Mons 
Martis,  I  think,  not  the  Mons  Martyrum. 

This  forms  a  mass  of  Roman  antiquities  which  together 
raise  Paris  to  the  rank  of  importance  amongst  the  scanty 
remnants  of  ancient  civilisation  in  Northern  Europe.  In 
the  Thermes  we  have  the  Roman  Louvre,  in  the  altar  of 
Jupiter  the  antitype  of  Notre  Dame,  in  the  cemetery  of  the 
R.  Vivienne  the  Roman  Pere-la-Chaise,  in  the  foundations 
below  the  Palais  de  Justice,  the  Roman  Hotel  de  Ville,  in 
the  Purvis  de  Notre  Dame  perhaps  the  Roman  Forum,  the 
predecessor  of  the  Place  de  Greve. 

There  is  seldom  to  be  met  so  striking  a  bit  of  city  to- 
pography as  the  long  history  of  evolution  in  the  Cite,  or 
island,  of  Paris.  First,  it  was  a  group  of  palisaded  eyots 
in  a  broad  river  spreading  out  on  both  sides  into  swamps 
—  the  river  stronghold  of  a  tribe  called  by  the  Romans 
Parisii,  a  word  possibly  connected  with  Bar,  which  is 
thought  to  signify  a  frontier  (Bar-sur-Aube,  etc.).  Then 
this  river  stronghold  is  joined  to  the  mainland  by  two 
bridges  not  in  a  straight  line  but  at  opposite  ends  of  the 
island  and  both  doubtless  defended  ;  it  is  next  a  Roman 
city,  ultimately  walled,  with  its  central  temple,  its  munici- 
pality, its  quays,  and  some  outlying  buildings,  the  Im- 
perial Palace,  the  amphitheatre,  cemeteries,  camp,  and  the 
like,  on  the  mainland,  both  north  and  south  :  one  bridge, 
now  the  Pont  an  change,  opening  into  the  Place  du  Chd- 


382  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

telet ;  the  smaller  bridge,  now  Petit  Pont,  higher  up  the 
river  over  the  narrow  arm,  at  the  end  of  the  R.  St.  Jacques. 

This  Roman  city,  mainly  on  the  island,  but  with  an- 
nexes, north  and  south,  on  the  mainland,  according  to  the 
legend  of  St.  Genevieve,  repels  the  assault  of  Attila,  is  cap- 
tured by  Clovis  at  the  end  of  the  fifth  century,  and  is  made 
his  capital.  During  the  early  monarchy,  the  island  was 
the  city,  the  home  of  the  kings,  the  seat  of  the  church,  of 
government,  and  of  justice,  crowded  with  narrow  streets 
and  churches,  and  densely  populated.  Gradually  as  the 
walls  of  Paris  were  extended  in  a  series  of  circuits  from 
the  twelfth  to  the  eighteenth  century,  the  island  city  was 
eased  of  its  close  population,  and  at  last  in  our  own  day 
was  cleared  altogether  by  gigantic  sweeps  of  destruction 
and  reconstruction.  It  once  contained  some  50,000  inhabi- 
tants, at  least  fifty  or  sixty  streets,  and  more  than  twenty 
churches.  To-day  it  has  few  private  houses  left,  except 
at  each  end.  As  we  said,  the  Citt  consists  of  Cathedral, 
Palais  de  Justice,  and  Sainte  Ckapelle,  Conciergerie  and 
Prisons,  Prefecture  of  Police,  Chamber  of  Commerce,  a 
huge  hospital,  a  huge  barrack,  a  flower  market  —  vast 
'  places,'  gardens,  quays,  and  Morgue.  This  is  almost  all 
that  stands  on  the  Paris  of  Julian,  Clovis,  and  Hugh  Capet. 

It  is  a  task  full  of  historical  teaching  to  trace  the  suc- 
cessive circuits  and  the  walls  of  the  city  as  it  gradually 
grew.  Each  circuit  represents  an  epoch  in  the  history  of 
France.  First  comes  the  old  Roman  and  Gallo-Roman 
circuit  —  the  Citt  or  island  with  some  fortified  post  at  the 
head  of  the  North  Bridge  (PI.  du  Chatelet)  and  at  the 
South  Bridge  (R.  St.  Jacques)  extending  on  the  South 
mainland  as  far  as  the  Thermes  with  villas,  theatres,  ceme- 
teries, and  establishments  outside  the  city  circuit.  The 
second  circuit  is  that  of  Louis  the  Stout,  the  great  restorer 
of  the  monarchy  (1130),  who  built  the  Grand  Chatelet  on 


PARIS   AS   AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  383 

the  site  of  the  Place  du  Chdtelet,  and  the  Petit  Chdtelet  on 
the  Quai  St.  Michel  (left  bank).  The  third  circuit  is  that 
of  the  great  king  Philip  Augustus  (1200),  who  built  the 
Louvre,  completed  Notre  Dame,  and  carried  the  walls 
North  as  far  as  St.  Eustache,  South  as  far  as  the  Pan- 
theon, and  included  the  smaller  island,  so  that  the  original 
Citt  was  now  but  a  sixth  of  the  city.  Next  comes  the 
fourth  circuit,  raised  by  Etienne  Marcel  in  the  middle  of 
the  fourteenth  century,  just  after  Poitiers  during  the  great 
English  War,  who  is  duly  commemorated  by  the  fine 
equestrian  statue  beside  the  Hotel  du  Ville.  Marcel  laid 
the  foundations  of  the  Bastille,  and  repaired  and  strength- 
ened rather  than  extended  the  circuit  of  Philip  Augustus  ; 
and  then  the  whole  work  was  completed  by  Charles  v.  in 
the  second  half  of  the  fourteenth  century.  The  fifth  great 
circuit  is  that  of  Richelieu  under  Louis  xin.  who  carried  the 
city  walls  Northwards  as  far  as  the  existing  inner  Boule- 
vards, and  the  R.  Richelieu  and  its  quarter  is  one  of  its 
additions  ;  and  Southwards  it  inclosed  the  whole  district  of 
the  Luxembourg  and  its  gardens  to  \.\\zjardin  des  Plantes. 
The  sixth  great  change  came  in  the  reign  of  Louis  xiv. 
who  conceiving  himself  invincible  in  France,  if  not  in 
Europe,  found  fortifications  in  Paris  needless  and  bar- 
barous. Accordingly  in  his  reign  the  old  walls  of  Henry 
iv.  and  Richelieu  were  razed,  and  the  Boulevards  that  we 
know  were  constructed  as  spacious  avenues.  On  the  site 
of  the  ancient  Tour  de  Nesle,  the  Institute  and  the  College 
Mazarin  were  built ;  the  Louvre  was  completed  and  trans- 
formed into  an  Italian  palace  ;  the  Tuileries  were  contin- 
ued until  they  joined  the  Louvre  ;  the  Invalides  and  other 
great  works  were  continued,  and  finally  Paris  received  its 
character  of  an  open  modern  city  of  Palladian  architecture. 
The  seventh  great  change  was  in  the  reign  of  Louis  xvi. 
just  before  the  Revolution,  when  for  purely  fiscal  purposes 


384  THE    CITY    IN   HISTORY. 

the  octroi  barrier  was  carried  forward  to  inclose  vast  dis- 
tricts not  before  within  the  walls.  This  was  adopted  by 
the  Revolution  and  completed  by  Napoleon.  The  eighth 
and  final  circuit  was  that  of  L.  Philippe  in  1840,  the  fortifi- 
cations which  held  the  German  army  at  bay  for  four 
months  —  which  it  is  now  proposed  to  destroy  for  a  mili- 
tary circuit  even  more  vast.  The  story  of  the  successive 
circuits  of  Paris  is  the  history  of  France  in  its  critical 
epochs. 

After  the  political  and  military  history  of  the  city  comes 
the  history  of  its  religious  foundations,  the  Churches, 
Abbeys,  and  confraternities.  No  one  can  suppose,  till  he 
has  gone  into  it,  the  enormous  number  of  these,  their 
strange  antiquity,  their  rich  and  stirring  history.  The 
fragments  of  these  abbeys  and  churches  that  we  see  to-day 
are  the  scanty  remnants  of  vast  edifices  and  a  dense  popu- 
lation scattered  and  gone —  just  as  a  column  or  an  arch  at 
Rome  survives  to  tell  us  of  the  mighty  city  of  the  Caesars 
with  its  millions.  The  Revolution,  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury, the  Napoleons,  Haussmann,  and  the  Municipal  Coun- 
cil have  swept  away  the  old  churches  and  convents  of 
Paris  by  hundreds  and  thousands.  The  immense  clear- 
ances in  the  Island  CitJ,  those  between  and  around  the 
Louvre  and  the  Tuileries,  the  new  Boulevards  and  broad 
Avenues,  have  destroyed  scores  and  scores.  The  new 
Hotel  Dieu  and  the  ' places  '  in  front  of  and  round  Notre 
Dame,  the  Barrack  of  the  Guard  and  the  Tribunal  de  Com- 
merce and  Prefecture  of  Police  have  between  them  demol- 
ished more  than  twenty  entire  streets  and  at  least  twenty 
churches,  chapels,  oratories,  and  religious  edifices.  The 
names  of  churches  and  foundations  destroyed  survive  in 
the  countless  St.  Jacques  and  St.  Pierres,  the  Capucins, 
Jacobins,  Mathurins,  and  so  forth,  that  we  find  in  the 
streets  and  passages.  All  those  who  are  seriously  inter- 


PARIS    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  385 

ested  in  the  ecclesiastical  antiquities  of  old  Paris  should 
study  the  very  excellent  guide  just  published — The 
Churches  of  Paris,  from  Clovis  to  Charles  X.,  by  S.  Sophia 
Beale,  with  illustrations  by  the  author  (London,  1893).  It 
collects,  in  a  useful  and  interesting  manner,  a  mass  of 
information  as  to  the  old  churches  of  Paris. 

We  forget,  in  their  new  casing,  the  antiquity  of  those 
which  remain.  The  Madeleine  which  we  stare  at  as  a 
bran-new  Greek  Temple  is  as  old  as  the  thirteenth  century 
in  foundation.  It  is  contemporary  with  St.  Louis,  and  was 
in  origin  the  chapel  of  the  country  palace  of  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Paris  —  exactly  answering  to  Lambeth  Palace. 
So  too  the  Pantheon  —  which  Englishmen  are  too  wont  to 
look  on  as  an  imitation  of  St.  Paul's,  and  a  mere  piece  of 
eighteenth  century  classicism  —  is  one  of  the  oldest  and 
most  interesting  monuments  in  Christendom.  The  church 
of  Saint  Genevieve,  the  patron  saint  of  Paris,  who  is  said 
to  have  roused  the  citizens  to  resist  Attila  the  Hun,  was 
founded  to  contain  her  tomb  in  508  by  Clovis  and 
Clotilda  the  first  Christian  King  and  Queen  of  the  Franks. 
Clovis  and  Clotilda  and  many  of  their  race  were  there 
buried,  beside  the  Jeanne  d'Arc  of  the  fifth  century.  A 
vast  abbey  rose  there  ;  its  name  was  frequently  changed. 
The  tombs  and  the  relics  were  transferred  at  times  to  St. 
Etienne  du  Mont,  with  which  it  is  closely  associated.  The 
name,  the  exact  spot,  the  building,  have  been  constantly 
altered.  The  church  that  we  see,  which  is  little  more  than 
a  hundred  years  old,  has  been  three  times  a  church,  and 
three  times  converted  into  a  secular  monument  which  it  is 
to-day.  It  is  the  older  Westminster  Abbey  of  Paris,  for  it 
goes  back  to  times  before  Arthur,  and  to  a  century  before 
the  coming  of  the  monks  amongst  the  Saxons.  The  church 
which  fourteen  centuries  ago  was  dedicated  to  the  first 
champions  of  Northern  Christianity,  has  been  the  burying- 

2B 


386  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

place  of  Mirabeau,  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  and  Marat,  and  has 
now  again  been  made  a  secular  monument  in  order  to  hold 
the  ashes  of  Victor  Hugo. 

'  St.  Germain '  means  to  an  English  ear  aristocratic, 
magnificent,  exclusive.  But  historically,  St.  Germain  is 
the  abbey  founded  by  Childebert,  the  son  of  Clovis  in  542, 
half  a  century  before  Augustine  came  to  Canterbury.  Its 
church  was  the  burying-place  of  many  kings  of  the  first 
dynasty.  The  church  that  we  see  in  the  Boulevard  St. 
Germain  is  of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  ;  but  it 
is  said  to  contain  some  fragments  of  carving,  capitals,  and 
columns  in  the  apse  from  the  church  of  Childebert.  The 
ancient,  but  probably  not  the  original,  tombs  of  the  Mer- 
wings  have  been  removed  to  St.  Denis  and  to  the  Museums. 
Hugh  Capet,  the  founder  of  the  third  dynasty,  was  Abbot 
of  St.  Germain.  It  was  one  of  the  greatest  foundations 
in  Christendom.  We  may  read  in  the  Histoire  Generate  a 
full  account  of  it,  with  many  illustrations  at  different  times. 
It  was  one  of  the  greatest  centres  of  Benedictine  learn- 
ing. Mabillon,  Monfaucon  laboured  there.  They  lie  in 
the  church  with  Descartes  and  Boileau. 

The  Abbaye,  the  prison  of  the  Revolution,  was  part  of 
the  monastery,  and  was  only  removed  in  the  third  empire 
in  my  own  memory.  The  famous  Prt  aux  clercs,  renowned 
in  romance  and  memoir,  in  the  drama  and  in  art,  where  the 
gallants  of  the  Renascence  fought  their  duels,  was  the 
riverside  meadow  of  the  learned  monks.  What  a  world  it 
is !  Here  is  a  church,  the  Westminster  Abbey  of  the  first 
Frank  kings  at  a  date  when  the  Britons  were  fighting  the 
heathen  Saxons  inch  by  inch — the  home  for  twelve  cen- 
turies of  a  mighty  order  and  the  central  seat  of  their 
learning  —  the  abbey  of  the  mitred  sovereign  who  gave 
his  name  to  the  dynasty  of  France,  the  home  of  modern 
French  learning,  —  the  scene  of  the  duels  of  Henri  n.  and 


PARIS    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  387 

the  massacres  of  September  —  now  a  poor  maimed  and 
restored  fragment  of  Romanesque  architecture,  drowned 
in  the  torrential  magnificence  of  a  Napoleonic  Boulevard, 
and  giving  its  ancient  name  to  the  luxurious  retreat  of 
impotent  bigotry. 

St.  Denis  is  the  true  Westminster  Abbey  of  Paris,  the 
burying-place  of  so  many  kings  since  Dagobert.  It  com- 
memorates Dionysius,  a  Christian  martyr  of  the  third 
century  in  the  Decian  persecution,  called  the  first"  bishop 
of  Paris.  Dagobert,  in  the  seventh  century,  built  here  a 
great  basilica  ;  but  in  the  twelfth  century  Suger  made  it 
one  of  the  great  cradles  of  pointed  architecture.  If  we 
could  see  St.  Denis  as  it  existed  down  to  the  Revolution 
with  all  its  tombs,  its  monuments,  and  its  treasures  intact, 
our  own  Abbey  could  hardly  compare  with  it  in  historical 
interest.  Accustomed  to  the  hallowed  gloom  of  our  own 
Abbey,  we  shudder  at  the  new,  scraped,  gilt  revivalism  of 
St.  Denis  to-day.  But  though  its  treasures  are  scattered, 
and  the  bones  torn  from  its  desecrated  graves,  and  the  old 
glass  is  destroyed  with  the  tombs,  statues,  carvings,  and 
wood  work,  though  the  Viollet-le-Ducs  have  had  their  will 
upon  the  old  church  —  yet  the  historical  mind  must  recog- 
nise, when  it  has  recovered  its  temper,  that  the  church  of 
the  great  Abbot  Suger  still  presents  to  us  a  type  with 
which  few  buildings  of  the  Middle  Ages  can  vie  in  histori- 
cal memories. 

He  who  will  follow  up  the  histories  of  these  Abbeys, — 
of  Ste.  Genevihie,  of  St.  Germain,  St.  Denis,  St.  Victor, 
the  foundation  of  William  of  Champeaux,  of  the  other 
St.  Germain,  opposite  the  Louvre,  and  St.  Jacques  de  la 
Boucherie  —  who  will  study  the  history  of  the  schools  of 
Paris,  so  famous  from  the  eleventh  to  the  fourteenth  cen- 
turies and  the  growth  of  the  University,  incorporated  by 
St.  Louis  in  the  thirteenth  century  —  will  come  to  see  how 


388  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

completely,  during  the  Middle  Ages,  Paris  was  the  intel- 
lectual centre  of  Catholicism,  if  Rome  was  its  centre  of 
government.  And  he  who  will  watch  all  that  goes  on 
to-day  in  the  quarter  between  Notre  Dame  and  the  Invalides 
will  understand  how  deep  are  the  roots  of  this  organised 
Catholicism  still  —  in  spite  of  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  Revolu- 
tion, and  Commune. 

We  may  still  see  in  Paris  three  typical  masterpieces  of 
Gothic  "art,  each  one  recording  a  great  chief  in  a  central 
epoch.  The  first  is  the  Abbey  of  St.  Denis,  built  in  1140 
by  Suger,  the  friend  and  fellow-worker  of  St.  Bernard,  the 
great  minister  of  Louis  the  Stout.  The  next  is  the  Cathe- 
dral of  Notre  Dame,  practically  completed  about  sixty  years 
later  in  the  reign  of  Philip  Augustus.  The  third  is  the 
Sainte  CJiapelle,  built  in  1 245  by  his  grandson,  Saint  Louis. 
Within  the  space  of  this  one  hundred  years,  from  1140  to 
1245,  the  pointed  style  in  France  arose,  flourished,  and 
reached  perfection.  These  three  buildings  are  associated 
with  the  three  great  kings  of  French  Feudalism.  St. 
Denis  is  perhaps  the  earliest  complete  example  of  the 
pointed  style  :  it  is  earlier  than  our  Salisbury  by  a  hundred 
years.  As  the  Westminster  Abbey  of  France,  as  the  type 
of  the  first  pointed  style  in  its  central  home,  St.  Denis 
must  be  reckoned,  at  least  by  the  historian,  as  the  cradle 
of  pointed  architecture,  even  more  truly  than  the  dome  of 
St.  Peter's  at  Rome  is  the  cradle  of  the  domed  architect- 
ure of  the  Renascence. 

Notre  Dame,  to  the  historian  if  not  to  the  artist,  is  the 
typical,  central,  Gothic  Cathedral.  It  is  almost,  if  not 
absolutely,  the  earliest  of  the  great  pointed  Cathedrals  in 
their  maturity.  Its  noble  facade  is  altogether  the  grandest, 
most  majestic,  most  permanently  satisfying  of  all  the  great 
creations  of  the  pointed  style  —  at  least  if,  in  the  mind's 
eye,  we  conceive  it  with  all  its  carving  and  statues  perfect 


PARIS   AS   AN    HISTORIC   CITY.  389 

in  their  original  form,  and  perhaps  with  its  towers  carried 
some  hundred  feet  higher  by  spires  in  some  such  way  as 
Viollet-le-Duc  conceived.  If  there  be  pointed  Cathedrals 
which  surpass  Notre  Dame  in  mass,  richness,  and  beauty, 
and  there  can  be  but  three  others,  the  historical  importance 
of  Notre  Dame  stands  pre-eminent,  as  the  work  of  the 
French  monarchy  at  its  highest  point,  as  the  cathedral  of 
their  capital,  the  intellectual  centre  of  Catholicism  in  the 
thirteenth  century  —  the  high  water-mark  of  Western  Chris- 
tendom. He  who  would  understand  the  Middle  Ages 
should  make  a  minute  study  of  one  of  these  mighty  works, 
with  the  admirable  monographs  of  the  French  archaeol- 
ogists. Notre  Dame,  with  its  triple  portals,  and  the  gallery 
of  the  kings,  its  carvings  and  statues,  the  exquisite  screen 
within  round  the  choir,  its  majestic  facade  and  noble  towers, 
had  no  superior  in  Gothic  Art,  whilst  it  failed  least  in 
stability  and  simplicity,  the  one  side  where  Gothic  art  is 
usually  prone  to  err.  It  is  a  happiness  to  be  able  to 
remember  Notre  Dame  before  the  restoration  began  :  when 
it  was  surrounded  by  a  labyrinth  of  picturesque  streets 
and  buildings,  and  the  grey  facade  rose  up  in  proud  pathos 
from  out  the  gables  in  crumbling  and  battered  decay. 

The  Cathedral  has  never  before  been  seen  as  we  see 
it  to-day  :  for  it  now  stands  alone  in  vast  open  spaces, 
detached  from  the  houses,  churches,  chapels,  and  palaces 
which  were  piled  up  round  it.  To-day  it  looks  too  much 
like  a  huge  model,  or  disinterred  ruin,  set  in  an  open-air 
museum.  It  is  no  longer  the  central  cathedral  of  Catholic 
France:  it  is  a  sight,  a  relic,  a  national  monument,  an 
ecclesiastical  Palais  des  TJiermes :  from  the  restored  frag- 
ments of  which  the  city,  and  all  that  can  recall  its  builders 
has  been  unsparingly  swept  into  oblivion. 

Thirdly,  the  Sainte  Chapelle,  the  work  of  St.  Louis,  in 
the  middle  of  the  thirteenth  century,  is  accepted  as  the 


3QO  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

type  of  pointed  art  in  its  zenith.  It  may  be  called  the  only 
quite  perfect  work  of  Gothic  art,  mainly  because  its  small 
scale  necessarily  frees  it  from  the  besetting  weaknesses 
of  Gothic  art  when  it  essays  the  grandest  problems  of  the 
builders'  science.  Nor  need  the  historian  of  art  regret  the 
restoration  so  fiercely  as  does  the  artist.  When  Viollet-le- 
Duc  took  it  in  hand,  it  was  a  mutilated  ruin,  out  of  which 
the  ordinary  visitor  could  not  reconstruct  its  original  glow. 
The  paint  may  be  overdone ;  the  colours  are  not  always 
harmonious;  the  new  glass  is  not  equal  to  the  old.  But 
its  restoration  by  the  most  learned  of  modern  antiquarians 
enables  the  unlearned  to  judge  the  effect  of  Gothic  archi- 
tecture in  its  glory,  and  to  understand  the  pregnant  remark 
of  Mr.  Fergusson  that  Gothic  architecture  might  well  be 
named  the  painted-glass  style  of  building.  To  the  histo- 
rian, this  Chapel,  the  domestic  oratory  of  St.  Louis,  the 
purest  hero  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  church  of  the  palace 
of  the  French  kings  in  their  noblest  era,  the  entrancing 
masterpiece  of  pointed  architecture,  must  remain  as  one 
of  the  typical  buildings  in  the  world. 

The  mass  of  buildings,  of  which  the  Sainte  Chapelle  is 
part,  exactly  answers  to  our  palace  of  Westminster ;  and 
our  palace  alone  can  compare  with  it  as  a  relic  of  the  Feudal 
monarchy.  The  Conciergerie  prison,  the  adjacent  hall,  and 
the  towers  which  we  see  along  the  Quai  de  r  Horloge,  cor- 
respond with  the  remains  of  the  old  palace  of  Westminster, 
which  was  finally  destroyed  when  the  Houses  of  Parliament 
were  built.  The  Sainte  Chapelle  answers  to  St.  Stephen's, 
of  which  the  exquisite  crypt  alone  survived  the  fire  of  1834. 
Westminster  Hall  answers  to  the  Salle  dcs  Pas  Perdus, 
which  took  the  place  of  the  great  Hall  of  St.  Louis.  The 
Palais  de  Justice  answers  to  the  Law  Courts  of  West- 
minster which  were  in  use  till  removed  in  1882.  The 
Tour  de  f  Horloge  exactly  repeats  our  Clock  Tower.  Now 


PARIS    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  39! 

the  French  palace  is  in  foundation  far  more  ancient  than 
the  English  ;  more  of  its  ancient  parts  remain  ;  and  its 
historical  record  is  longer,  and  almost  more  crowded  with 
incident,  than  our  own.  The  French  palace  is  the  suc- 
cessor of  the  Municipal  palace  of  Roman  Lutetia ;  and 
traces  of  this  building  have  been  preserved.  It  was  cer- 
tainly the  Parisian  palace  of  Clovis  and  his  dynasty,  of 
Charlemagne  and  his  dynasty,  and  it  was  the  capital  seat 
of  the  Counts  of  Paris,  when  they  became  kings  of  France. 
It  only  ceased  to  be  a  royal  residence  in  the  age  of 
Francis  I.  and  Henri  n.  It  was  thus  for  a  thousand  years 
the  home  of  the  monarchs  of  the  Seine  valley.  It  is 
significant  of  French  history  that,  whereas  in  England  Par- 
liament has  finally  ousted  both  Monarchy  and  Justice  from 
the  Palace  of  Westminster  and  installed  itself  in  the  royal 
abode  and  even  taken  its  name,  in  Paris  it  is  Justice  and 
Police  which  have  appropriated  the  Palace  in  the  island  Cit/ 
and  have  long  ago  ousted  both  Parliament  and  Monarchy. 
In  England  we  have  nothing  of  the  old  palace  left  but 
the  crypt  of  St.  Stephen's,  some  cloisters,  a  few  chambers, 
and  the  great  Hall.  In  France  they  have  rebuilt  their  old 
Hall ;  but  they  have  their  Chapel  almost  entire.  And 
whereas  in  Westminster  we  have  the  old  palace  now  re- 
built, and  absorbed  in  Barry's  modern  perpendicular,  in 
Paris  they  have  still  the  shell  of  the  old  towers  and  gate- 
way, and  some  fine  work  of  the  age  of  St.  Louis  within  the 
Conciergcrie  building.  There  is  some  noble  masonry  in 
what  is  called  the  Kitchen  of  St.  Louis,  evidently  the  sub- 
structure of  his  palace,  and  many  other  parts  of  his  work 
within  the  precincts  of  the  prison.  Few  prisons  have  a 
record  more  stirring.  Here,  during  the  Revolution,  all  the 
chief  prisoners  passed  their  last  hours.  We  may  still  see 
the  cell  where  Marie  Antoinette  uttered  her  last  prayers, 
where  Robespierre  lay  in  agony,  and  Danton  and  Vergn- 


392  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

iaud  thundered  out  their  latest  perorations,  —  and  they 
show  you,  too,  the  traditional  scene  of  the  mythical  last 
supper  of  the  Girondins,  which  figures  so  melodramatically 
in  the  famous  romance  of  Lamartine. 

This  Conciergerie,  with  the  hall  of  the  Cordelier  Club, 
the  Musee  Dupuytren,  is  the  only  extant  building  in  Paris, 
which  is  closely  associated  with  great  scenes  of  the  Revo- 
lution. The  Bastille  is  gone,  the  Tuileries,  the  Hotel  de 
Ville,  the  Hall  of  the  Convention  in  the  R.  de  Rivoli,  the 
Jacobin  Club,  the  prisons,  the  Temple,  Abbaye,  La  Force, 
Chatelet,  and  the  rest.  So,  too,  the  tombs  of  Mirabeau, 
Voltaire,  Rousseau,  Marat,  Louis  xvi.,  and  Marie  Antoinette 
no  longer  hold  their  bones,  and  cenotaphs  record  the 
spot  where  they  were  laid.  Etiam  periere  sepulchra.  New 
Haussmannic  streets  cover  the  soil,  wherein  the  ashes  of 
Danton  and  Vergniaud,  Charlotte  Corday  and  Madame 
Roland,  moulder  unknown.  Of  the  Revolution  no  build- 
ings remain  but  only  sites  ;  and  the  only  edifices,  which 
survive  to  speak  to  us  of  the  September  massacres  and 
the  Terror,  are  the  dining-hall  of  the  followers  of  St. 
Francis  and  the  palace  of  St.  Louis,  the  knight  and  crusader. 

In  spite  of  destruction  and  reconstruction,  the  history  of 
the  great  edifices  of  old  Paris  is  wonderfully  instructive, 
even  that  of  the  buildings  which  have  wholly  disappeared. 
But  they  must  be  studied  in  the  learned  and  elaborate 
works,  such  as  those  of  Dulaure,  Piganiol,  Viollet-le-Duc, 
Lacroix,  Lenoir,  Guilhermy,  Fournier,  Hoffbauer,  Fergus- 
son,  Hamerton,  in  the  Histoire  Generale,  and  in  Paris  d 
travers  les  Ages,  in  the  splendid  series  of  etchings  and 
engravings  of  old  Paris,  which  may  be  found  in  the  library 
of  the  Carnavalet  Museum,  and  in  our  British  Museum. 
Bastille,  Louvre,  Hotel  de  Ville,  Tuileries,  Luxembourg^  the 
Cite,  St.  Germain,  Ste.  Genevieve,  would  each  require  an 
essay,  or  a  volume  with  maps  and  plans  and  restorations, 


PARIS    AS    AN    HISTORIC    CITY.  393 

to  make  them  intelligible.  But  those  who  seek  to  know 
what  Paris  has  been  in  the  long  succession  of  ages  may 
still  revive  it  in  their  minds,  with  the  aid  of  the  mass  of 
literature  that  is  open  to  them,  and  if  they  will  study  not 
only  the  extant  churches,  but  such  works  of  domestic  art 
as  the  Hotel  Cluny,  and  Hotel  de  Sens,  Hotel  la  Valette,  the 
house  in  the  Cours  la  Reine,  and  the  Hotel  Carnavalet. 

A  careful  study  of  Silvestre,  Ducerceau,  and  Me>yon 
will  give  some  idea  of  old  Paris,  with  its  vast  walls,  gates, 
towers,  castles,  its  crowded  churches,  its  immense  abbeys, 
its  narrow  winding  streets,  its  fetid  cemeteries,  gloomy 
courts  and  impasses,  its  filthy  lanes,  and  its  bridges  loaded 
with  houses.  We  may  linger  about  the  old  remnants  of 
churches,  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of  the  Mediaeval  Catholi- 
cism, such  bits  as  the  tower  of  St.  Jacques,  and  the  portals 
of  the  two  St.  Germains  and  of  St.  Nicolas  des  CJiamps,  the 
old  churches  of  St.  Julien  le  Pauvre,  and  St.  Martin  des 
Champs,  the  church  of  St.  Se"verin,  and  the  chapel  of  the 
Chdteau  dc  Vincennes.  Then  let  us  study  the  tombs  in  St. 
Germain  des  Prh,  of  St.  Denis,  St.  Etienne  du  Mont :  and 
then  we  may  go  on  to  the  tomb  that  all  Englishmen  visit 
—  the  tomb  which  I  always  feel  to  be  the  grandest  of  all 
sepulchral  conceptions  (to  be  set  beside  the  tomb  of  Theod- 
oric  at  Ravenna,  and  the  tomb  of  Cecilia  Metella  on  the 
Appian  way),  almost  the  one  work  of  modern  art,  which  is 
at  once  colossal,  noble,  and  pathetic — I  mean  the  mighty 
vault  beneath  the  dome  of  the  Invalides,  where  the  great- 
est soldier  and  the  worst  ruler  of  our  age  sleeps  at  last  in 
peace,  guarded  by  the  veterans  of  France. 

We  need  not  deny  to  modern  Paris  the  gift  of  charm  ; 
we  may  admit  that  her  museums  and  libraries,  her  collec- 
tions, and  her  treasures  are  inexhaustible  to  the  fit  stu- 
dent ;  but  far  more  impressive  is  the  history  of  this 
memorable  city,  with  its  vast  range  of  time,  of  variety,  of 


394  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

association  —  with  its  record  of  the  dawn  of  Western  civ- 
ilisation, of  Catholicism  and  Feudalism,  of  the  Renascence, 
and  the  modern  world,  of  the  Revolution  of  the  last  cen- 
tury, and  the  Imperialism  of  this  century  —  with  its  dust 
enriched  with  the  bones  of  those  who  in  things  of  the  soul 
and  in  things  of  war,  in  the  love  of  beauty,  and  in  the 
passion  for  new  life,  have  dared  and  done  memorable 
deeds,  from  the  days  of  Genevieve  and  Clotilda,  the  Louis 
and  the  Henrys,  down  to  the  two  Napoleons,  and  the  three 
Republics. 


CHAPTER    XIV. 

THE    TRANSFORMATION    OF    PARIS.1 

No  city  of  the  Old  World  has  undergone  changes  so 
enormous  within  the  last  hundred  years  as  the  city  of 
Paris.  To  contrast  its  condition  down  to  the  year  1789 
with  its  condition  to-day  is  to  measure  the  civilisation  of 
old  Europe  by  the  civilisation  of  the  Europe  we  see.  Paris 
in  1789  was  a  perfect  type  of  the  feudal,  monarchic,  obso- 
lete system  of  privilege;  the  Paris  of  1889  is  the  most 
republican,  the  most  modern,  the  most  symmetrical  and 
complete  of  the  cities  of  Europe.  The  hundred  years 
have  witnessed  there  a  reorganisation  of  social  life  more 
rapid  and  profound  than  any  other  which  Europe  has 
known. 

If  the  millions  who  throng  the  boulevards,  and  the 
Places,  the  Champ  de  Mars,  and  the  Esplanade  of  the  Inva- 
lides  could  but  roll  back  the  veil  of  time,  could  see  that 
city  as  it  stood  in  the  closing  years  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, they  would  behold  a  city  which  in  all  essential  things 
was  a  fortress  of  the  Middle  Ages,  adorned  with  some  vast 
palaces  and  churches  of  the  Grand  Monarqne  —  a  city,  in 
the  main,  such  as  Rome  was  until  the  Italian  kingdom  had 
entered  and  transformed  it.  They  would  see  the  life  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  in  most  material  points,  unaltered  — 
nay,  traces  of  the  life  of  the  sixteenth,  the  fifteenth,  and 
even  of  the  fourteenth  century. 

The  vast,  gloomy,  and  decayed  remains  of  the  old  city 

1  The  North  American  Rwiew,  Sept.  1889,  vol.  149. 
395 


396  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

still  cumbered  the  lines  of  so  many  gay  and  open  boule- 
vards. Where  there  are  now  some  twenty  bridges  across 
the  Seine,  there  were  then  but  six  or  seven  ;  and  on  some 
of  these  could  still  be  seen  the  houses  and  buildings  which 
made  the  bridges  of  old  Europe  crowded  alleys.  There 
were  few  open  spaces  at  all  except  in  front  of  the  Hotel  de 
Ville  and  at  the  end  of  the  garden  of  the  Tiiileries.  The 
old  city  of  Richelieu  and  Mazarin  —  the  city  (to  speak 
roughly)  that  lay  between  the  Pantheon  and  the  gate  of 
St.  Denis,  and  between  the  Tnileries  and  the  Bastille  — 
existed  still,  and  much  in  the  condition  in  which  Riche- 
lieu and  Mazarin  had  known  it,  —  crowded  with  narrow, 
crooked,  picturesque  streets,  unpaved,  uncleaned,  ill- 
lighted,  with  Gothic  portals  and  towers  here  and  there ; 
crowded  round  with  houses,  halls,  and  mansions.  The 
island,  or  old  Cite',  in  particular,  was  a  dense  tangle  of 
streets,  churches,  and  religious  edifices.  From  north  to 
south  there  ran  several  ancient  and  a  few  recent  thorough- 
fares ;  but  from  east  to  west  he  who  wished  to  pass  from 
the  Bastille  to  the  Louvre  would  make  his  way  through  a 
network  of  tortuous  lanes,  where  the  direct  route  was  con- 
tinually interrupted  by  huge  palaces,  mediaeval  fortresses, 
or  conventual  enclosures. 

Four  great  castles  of  feudal  times  still  frowned  over  the 
city  and  bore  the  banner  of  the  Old  Monarchy  —  the  Cha- 
telet,  the  Bastille,  the  Temple,  and  the  Conciergerie.  Of 
these  not  a  vestige  remains  except  the  restored  simulac- 
rum of  the  last.  In  the  midst  of  this  jumble  of  close  and 
mediaeval  streets  there  were  scattered  many  sumptuous 
Palladian  palaces  of  royal,  princely,  or  ducal  founders, 
with  fore-courts,  colonnades,  terraces,  and  enclosed  gar- 
dens, stretching  over  acres,  and  dominating  entire  quarters 
in  defiant,  lavish,  insolent  pride.  Here  and  there  still 
towered  above  the  modern  streets  a  huge  remnant  of  some 


THE    TRANSFORMATION    OF    PARIS.  397 

castle  of  the  fourteenth  or  fifteenth  century,  such  as  we 
may  see  to  this  day  in  Florence,  Verona,  or  Rome. 

And,  besides  these  castles  and  palaces,  the  closely- 
packed  streets  were  even  more  thickly  strewn  with 
churches,  convents,  and  abbeys.  Notre  Dame,  St.  Eus- 
taclie,  St.  Germain,  r  Auxerrois,  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  the 
Louvre,  the  Palais  Royal,  and  the  Palais  de  Justice  were 
hemmed  in  with  a  labyrinth  of  old  and  entangled  streets. 
Buildings,  alleys,  and  even  churches  separated  the  Louvre 
from  the  Tuileries,  Notre  Dame  from  the  Palais  de  Jus- 
tice, cut  off  Notre  Dame  and  the  Hotel  de  Ville  from  the 
river,  stood  between  Palais  Royal  and  Louvre,  and  be- 
tween the  Pantheon  and  the  garden  of  the  Luxembourg. 
Where  the  graceful  fountain  of  Victory  now  brightens 
one  of  the  gayest  spots  in  Paris,  Place  du  Chatelet,  bor- 
dered with  two  immense  theatres,  colonnades,  gardens, 
and  trees,  there  were  then  the  decayed  remnant  of  the 
great  royal  fortress  and  a  network  of  crooked  and  un- 
sightly lanes. 

Besides  the  churches,  chapels,  hospitals,  palaces,  and 
castles,  there  also  stood  within  the  circuit  of  the  city 
more  than  two  hundred  religious  houses  for  both  sexes  ; 
abbeys,  convents,  nunneries,  and  fraternities ;  peopled 
with  thousands  of  men  and  women,  leading  separate  lives, 
under  different  vows,  owning  obedience  to  far-distant 
superiors,  and  possessing  various  immunities.  The  vast 
areas  occupied  by  the  abbeys  of  St.  Germain,  of  St. 
Martin,  of  St.  Victor,  by  the  houses  of  the  Bernardins, 
and  the  Cttestins,  and  the  Quinze-  Vingts,  were  a  sensible 
portion  of  the  whole  area  within  the  walls.  From  the  then 
new  Place  Louis  X V.  to  the  Bastille,  from  the  Luxembourg 
garden  to  th^  Port  St.  Denis,  Paris  was  a  great  fortified 
city  of  the  Middle  Ages,  crammed  with  thousands  of 
sacred  buildings,  Catholic  and  feudal  institutions,  and 


THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

thickly  studded  with  Italian  palaces,  colleges,  hospitals, 
and  offices  in  the  proud  and  lavish  style  of  Louis  xiv. 
Poverty,  squalor,  uncleanness,  and  vice  jostled  the  mag- 
nificence of  Princes  and  the  mouldering  creations  of  the 
ages  of  Faith. 

The  difference  between  the  Paris  of  1789  and  the  Paris 
of  1889  is  enormous  ;  but  it  is  very  far  from  true  that  the 
whole  difference  is  gain.  Much  has  been  gained  in  con- 
venience, health,  brilliance  :  much  has  been  lost  in  beauty, 
variety,  and  historical  tradition.  To  the  uncultured  vo- 
tary of  amusement  the  whole  of  the  change  represents 
progress :  to  the  artist,  the  antiquarian,  and  the  senti- 
mentalist it  represents  havoc,  waste,  and  bad  taste.  It 
would  be  well  if  the  tens  of  thousands  who  delight  in  the 
boulevards,  gardens,  and  sunny  bridges  of  to-day  would 
now  and  then  cast  a  thought  upon  the  priceless  works 
of  art,  the  historical  remains,  and  the  picturesque  charm 
which  the  new  Paris  has  swept  away.  Churches  and 
towers,  encrusted  sculptures  of  the  thirteenth,  fourteenth, 
and  fifteenth  centuries,  rare,  inimitable,  irrecoverable  won- 
ders of  skill  and  feeling,  have  been  swallowed  up  whole- 
sale in  the  modern  'improvements.'  Sixteen  churches 
have  disappeared  from  the  Cite  alone :  four  of  them  and 
ten  streets  have  been  carted  away  to  make  the  site  of  a 
single  hospital.  Where  is  the  abbey  of  St.  Victor,  of  St. 
Germain,  of  Ste.  Genevieve,  and  the  Cour  des  Comptes,  and 
the  churches  of  St.  AndrJ,  St.  Jacques  de  la  Boucherie, 
Saints  Innocents,  St.  Jean,  and  St.  Paul?  Where  are  the 
turrets  of  Saint  Louis,  and  Etienne  Marcel,  and  Philip 
the  Fair  ?  Where  are  the  quaint  passages  and  fantastic 
gables  preserved  for  us  only  by  Silvestre,  Perelle,  M6ryon, 
Gavarni,  Martial,  and  Gustave  Dore  ? 

It  would  be  idle  to  regret  the  inevitable  —  more  espe- 
cially  when    the    inevitable    means    the    rebuilding    and 


THE    TRANSFORMATION    OF    PARIS.  399 

laying-out  of  the  most  brilliant,  most  spacious,  most  sym- 
metrical of  modern  cities.  For  us  it  is  enough  that,  down 
to  the  Revolution  of  1789,  Paris  was  an  intensely  old- 
world  city ;  and  that  to-day  it  is  the  type  of  the  modern 
city.  In  the  eighteenth  century  London  had  lost  every 
trace  of  the  fortress,  of  the  feudal  city,  of  subservience  to 
king,  aristocracy,  or  church.  It  had  neither  ramparts,  nor 
traces  of  rampart,  nor  convents,  nor  proud  palaces,  nor 
royal  castles  in  its  midst.  The  Reformation  had  swept 
away  the  monasteries,  the  aristocracy  were  more  than  half 
bourgeois  (at  least  whilst  they  lived  in  London),  and  the 
King  was  a  popular  country  squire,  who,  in  things  essen- 
tial, was  governed  by  a  Liberal  Parliament.  The  Tower 
was  a  popular  show ;  the  Mayor  and  Corporation  were  a 
powerful,  free,  and  public-spirited  body ;  the  capital  was 
being  extended  and  beautified  in  the  interest  of  those  who 
lived  in  it ;  and,  in  all  its  main  lines,  the  city  of  London  was 
much  what  it  is  to-day.  It  was  about  one-third  more  popu- 
lous than  Paris,  better  paved,  better  lit,  with  a  better  sup- 
ply of  water  and  means  of  communication,  and  with  a  far 
superior  system  of  administration.  It  was  practically  a 
modern  city,  even  then :  it  was  the  current  type  of  the 
modern  city,  and  was  regarded  by  all  as  a  far  more  agree- 
able, more  civilised,  more  splendid  city  than  Paris.  It  was 
natural  enough  that,  when  the  liberal  nobles  and  wits  of 
France  began  to  visit  England  (as  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury they  universally  did),  an  Anglo-mania  resulted  — 
which  was  one  of  the  main  causes  of  the  Revolution. 

Some  of  the  great  ornaments  of  Paris  existed  complete 
in  1789,  but  they  were  encumbered  with  narrow  streets 
and  cut  off  from  each  other.  The  Louvre,  the  Tuileries, 
the  Palais  Royal  existed  much  as  we  have  seen  them,  but 
they  were  all  divided  from  each  other  by  blocks  of  build- 
ings and  intricate  lanes.  The  Palais  de  Justice,  the  re- 


4OO  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

mains  of  the  palace  of  St.  Louis,  and  Notre  Dame  were 
there,  but  were  blocked  up  by  modern  buildings.  Por- 
tions of  the  Luxembourg  and  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville  were 
standing.  The  Invalides,  the  Ecole  Militaire,  stood  as 
we  know  them;  the  Place  de  la  Concorde  (then  Place 
de  Louis  XV.}  was  already  laid  out,  and  the  two  great 
offices  flanking  the  Rue  Royale  were  already  built. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  bridge  now  called  de  la  Concorde 
was  not  open,  nor  did  it  abut  on  the  Hall  of  the  Corps 
Ltgislatif  ;  there  was  no  Arc  de  I '  Etoile,  no  Madeleine,  no 
Column  of  Vendome,  no  Place  de  V  Opera,  du  Chdtelet,  or 
de  la  Bastille.  The  Place  du  Carrousel  was  blocked  by 
buildings,  and  the  Rue  de  Rivoli,  the  Rue  de  la  Paix,  did 
not  exist.  The  Panthe'on  was  not  quite  finished ;  the 
Louvre  was  not  continued  on  the  northern  side ;  the  site 
of  the  Halles  was  a  network  of  streets ;  cemeteries  and 
charnel-houses  existed  within  the  city ;  the  quays  were 
irregular  and  rude  structures;  the  bridges  were  pictur- 
esque edifices  of  four  or  five  different  centuries,  and  only 
one-third  of  their  present  number ;  there  were  no  pave- 
ments for  foot-passengers,  no  cleansing  of  the  streets, 
whilst  open  sewers  met  one  at  every  turn.  Paris  in  1789 
was  much  what  Rome  was  in  1860  —  a  huge,  ancient,  for- 
tified city,  filled  with  dense,  squalid,  populous  districts, 
interspersed  with  vast  open  tracts  in  the  hands  of  power- 
ful nobles  or  great  monasteries,  and  the  whole  perpetually 
dominated  by  a  bigoted,  selfish,  and  indifferent  absolutism. 

The  population  of  Paris  in  1789,  according  to  the  latest 
and  best  authorities,  was  about  640,000  :  in  1889  it  is 
2,240,000.  It  has  thus  increased  exactly  three  and  one- 
half  times.  There  is  nothing  abnormal  in  this.  London 
in  the  same  time  has  grown  quite  fourfold,  and  a  similar 
rate  of  increase  has  been  seen  in  Berlin,  Vienna,  St. 
Petersburg,  Lyons,  Marseilles,  and  Rouen.  The  increase 


THE    TRANSFORMATION    OF    PARIS.  4<DI 

of  many  English  centres  of  industry,  and  of  nearly  all  the 
American,  has  been  vastly  greater  and  more  rapid.  Still, 
the  increase  of  Paris,  within  a  hundred  years,  of  three  or 
four  times  in  population  and  five  or  six  times  in  area,  is  a 
sufficiently  striking  fact.  In  1789  there  were  about  one 
thousand  streets  :  there  are  now  about  four  thousand. 
There  were  fifteen  boulevards  :  there  are  now  more  than 
one  hundred.  The  Invalidcs,  the  Luxembourg,  the  Bas- 
tille, the  line  of  the  inner  boulevards,  and  the  Place  Ven- 
ddmeihen  marked  the  utmost  limits  of  regular  habitations; 
and  thence  the  open  country  began.  There  were  within 
the  barriers  immense  spaces,  gardens,  and  parks  ;  but  they 
were  closed  to  the  public.  Paris  which  is  now  covered 
with  gardens,  parks,  plantations,  and  open  spaces  was  in 
1789  singularly  bare  of  any.  The  Jardin  des  Plantes,  the 
lardin  des  Tuileries,  were  royal  possessions  ;  the  Champs 
Elystes  and  the  Palais  Royal  were  favourite  walks.  But 
these  were  almost  the  only  accessible  promenades.  Of 
some  forty  places  of  importance  which  Paris  now  possesses, 
few  existed  in  1789,  except  the  Place  de  la  Concorde,  the 
Esplanade  of  the  Invalides,  the  Champ  de  Mars,  the  Place 
Vendome,  and  the  Place  Royale  (now  des  Vosges),  Within 
the  circuit  of  the  older  city  there  was  hardly  a  clear  space, 
a  plantation,  a  parterre,  or  a  free  walk,  except  in  the  Par- 
vis  de  Notre  Dame,  the  Marche"  des  Innocents,  and  the 
Place  de  la  Greve.  From  the  Louvre  to  the  Hotel  de  Ville 
there  lay  a  labyrinth  of  dark  and  tortuous  lanes,  such  as 
we  may  still  see  in  the  Ghetto  of  Rome  or  round  about  the 
Canongate  at  Edinburgh. 

The  change  that  has  taken  place  is  that  of  a  dream, 
or  a  transformation  in  a  theatre.  The  Revolution  came, 
the  Convention,  the  first  Empire,  the  Orleans  monarchy, 
and  the  third  Empire  —  and  all  is  new.  Streets  only  too 
symmetrical,  straight,  and  long  ;  open  spaces  at  the  junc- 

2C 


4O2  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

tion  of  all  the  principal  streets,  boulevards,  avenues,  gar- 
dens, fountains,  have  sprung  by  magic  into  the  places  so 
lately  covered  with  labyrinthine  alleys.  As  we  stand  to- 
day in  the  Place  du  Carrousel,  in  the  Place  de  fOp^ra,  du 
Theatre  Frangais,  du  CJidtelet,  de  la  Bastille,  des  Innocents, 
St.  Michel,  St.  Germain,  Notre  Dame,  or  de  V Hotel  de 
Ville,  each  radiant  with  imposing  buildings,  stately  ave- 
nues, monuments,  fountains,  columns,  and  colonnades,  with 
everything  that  modern  architecture  can  devise  of  spacious, 
airy,  and  gay,  it  is  hard  indeed  to  understand  how  in  so 
few  years  (and  much  of  it  within  the  memory  of  men  still 
living)  all  this  has  been  created  over  the  ruins  of  the 
dense,  dark,  intricate  streets  of  the  last  century,  where 
lanes  still  followed  the  ramparts  of  Louis  the  Stout  and 
Philip  Augustus,  where  the  remnants  existed  of  chateaux 
built  by  mediaeval  seigneurs,  or  during  the  civil  wars  of 
the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries. 

The  clearance  has  been  most  cruel  of  all  irt  the  old  Cite', 
the  original  Paris  of  the  earliest  ages.  Down  to  the  Revo- 
lution it  had  a  population  of  about  20,000,  which  has  now 
almost  wholly  disappeared,  along  with  the  sixteen  churches, 
the  oratories,  and  streets.  The  ancient  island  —  Lutetia  — 
is  now  occupied  almost  solely  by  six  enormous  public 
buildings  ;  and  the  spot,  which  for  eighteen  centuries  has 
been  busy  with  the  hum  of  a  city  life  of  intense  activity 
and  movement,  is  now  covered  only  by  a  lonely  but 
glorious  cathedral,  an  enormous  hospital,  a  huge  barrack, 
courts,  offices,  and  official  buildings.  The  oldest  bit  of 
Paris,  the  oldest  bit  of  city  in  all  Northern  Europe,  now 
looks  for  the  most  part  like  a  new  quarter  laid  out  on 
some  vacant  space.  Notre  Dame,  the  Sainte  CJiapelle,  the 
Conciergerie,  have  been  restored  and  furbished  up  till  they 
almost  might  pass  for  modern  buildings.  The  barrack, 
the  hospital,  the  geometric  streets,  the  open  square,  might 


THE    TRANSFORMATION    OF    PARIS.  403 

do  credit  to  Chicago.  It  is  all  very  fine,  imposing,  spa- 
cious, and  new.  But  a  groan  may  be  forgiven  to  those 
who  can  remember  the  mystic  portals  of  Notre  Dame  with 
the  gallery  of  the  kings,  surrounded  with  houses  which 
seemed  to  lean  upon  the  mother-church  for  comfort  and 
support,  before  the  restorer  had  worked  his  will  upon  the 
crumbling,  dark,  pathetic  fragments  of  carving,  whilst  the 
noblest  facade  ever  raised  by  northern  Gothic  builders 
still  looked  like  a  great  mediaeval  church,  and  not  like  an 
objct  d'art  to  be  gazed  at  in  a  museum. 

This  transformation,  the  most  astounding  that  Europe 
can  show,  fills  us  ever  anew  with  a  profound  sense  of  the 
power  which  for  a  century  has  animated  the  municipal 
government  of  Paris ;  of  the  energy,  wealth,  industrial 
skill,  artistic  imagination,  and  scientific  accomplishments 
which  have  gone  to  the  making  of  it.  To  plough  miles 
and  miles  of  broad  new  boulevards  through  the  most 
crowded  lines  of  an  ancient,  populous,  and  busy  city ;  to 
transform  a  network  of  Ghettos  into  a  splendid  series  of 
avenues,  squares,  and  gardens  ;  to  eviscerate  the  heart  of 
a  great  capital,  and  to  create  symmetry,  sunniness,  con- 
venience, gaiety,  and  variety  out  of  inveterate  confusion, 
gloom,  discomfort,  and  squalor  —  this  impresses  the  mind 
with  the  visible  signs  of  imperial  might  in  the  ruler,  and 
inexhaustible  versatility  and  adaptability  in  the  governed. 

It  is  a  different  thing  when  a  Frederick  plans  a  new 
city  in  Berlin,  or  when  a  Republic  creates  itself  a  capital 
in  Washington.  But  in  Paris  the  capital  existed ;  with 
eighteen  centuries  of  history,  with  monarchic,  feudal, 
ecclesiastical,  municipal  institutions  by  the  thousand, 
rooted  for  ages  in  the  soil,  and  buttressed  by  long  epochs 
of  prescription,  privilege,  law,  and  superstition.  Not  for 
an  hour  has  the  capital  ceased  to  be  the  living  heart  of 
France ;  not  for  a  day  has  its  own  activity  been  inter- 


4O4  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

rupted,  or  the  lives  of  some  million  or  so  of  citizens  been 
broken.  Republic,  Consulate,  Empire,  Monarchy,  have 
succeeded  each  other  in  turn.  Revolutions,  sieges,  massa- 
cres, anarchy,  tyranny,  parliaments,  dictators,  and  com- 
munes have  in  turn  had  their  seat  in  Paris,  and  have 
occupied  her  streets,  buildings,  and  monuments.  But 
under  all,  the  transformation  of  old  Paris  into  new  Paris 
has  gone  on.  Bastille,  Chdtelet,  Temple,  Tuilerics,  have 
been  swept  away  :  enormous  boulevards  and  avenues  have 
torn  their  huge  gaps  like  cannon-shot  through  ancient 
quarters :  abbeys,  churches,  palaces,  hospitals,  convents, 
gardens,  halls,  and  theatres  have  disappeared  like  unsub- 
stantial visions,  and  have  left  not  a  rack  behind.  As  the 
vacant  spaces  are  cleared,  new  streets,  theatres,  halls,  and 
squares  spring  up.  A  thousand  new  fancies  and  hundreds 
of  new  monuments  take  their  place  with  inexhaustible  in- 
vention. The  city  grows  more  populous,  more  rich,  more 
brilliant  year  by  year.  The  busy  life  which  is  silenced  in 
the  Cite,  or  by  the  new  boulevards,  avenues,  and  places, 
bursts  forth  with  a  louder  din  elsewhere.  Every  creation 
of  artistic  imagination,  every  invention  of  science,  is  in- 
stantly brought  into  service  and  adapted  to  modern  life. 
And  with  all  this  whirl  of  change  and  action,  Paris  remains 
in  its  essence  an  ancient,  and  not  a  modern,  city ;  a  very 
ancient  city  to  him  who  knows  its  history,  and  can  recall 
the  memorials  of  its  past.  To  this  day,  such  an  one  can 
retrace  her  successive  circuits,  her  ramparts  and  barriers 
of  successive  dynasties  ;  he  can  track  out  the  spots  made 
memorable  by  Julian,  by  Clovis,  by  Philip  Augustus,  by 
Francis  i.  and  Henry  iv.,  by  Abailard,  and  HeloTse,  and 
Jeanne  d'Arc,  by  Dante,  by  Descartes,  by  Corneille. 
Some  two  hundred  streets  still  bear  the  names  of  saints, 
each  recalling  some  convent  of  the  Merovingian,  Carlo- 
vingian,  or  Capetian  dynasty,  some  one  of  the  thousands 


THE    TRANSFORMATION    OF    PARIS.  405 

of  churches,  chapels,  oratories,  and  religious  houses  which 
once  filled  Paris.  To  the  historical  mind,  the  St.  Ger- 
mains,  the  St.  Thomases,  the  St.  Andres,  the  St.  Martins, 
the  St.  Victors,  the  St.  Bernards,  which  we  read  inscribed 
at  the  street  corner,  recall  a  series  of  local  memorials 
which  reach  back  for  a  thousand  years.  Here  St.  Louis 
stood  and  prayed  ;  here  the  Grand  Master  of  the  Templars 
was  burned ;  here  Jeanne  d'Arc  fell  desperately  wounded  ; 
here  Moliere  died  ;  here  Corneille  lived  ;  here  Coligny  was 
murdered,  here  Henry  iv.  was  stabbed ;  here  Voltaire  died, 
and  here  Camille  Desmoulins  opened  the  Revolution. 

Here,  as  everywhere  in  human  life,  we  must  take  the 
evil  with  the  good.  It  is  idle,  peevish,  retrograde,  to  rail 
at  the  inevitable,  or  to  cry  out  for  the  past.  There  has 
been  awful,  wanton,  brutal  destruction  ;  there  have  been 
corruption  and  plunder  ;  there  has  been  vile  art,  making 
itself  the  pandar  to  folly  and  lust ;  there  have  been  cruel 
disregard  of  the  poor  and  inhuman  orgies  of  wealth  and 
power,  in  all  this  series  of  transformation  scenes  which 
Paris  has  seen.  No  man  can  again  recall  to  us  the  exquisite 
fancies  carved  on  stone  and  on  jewelled  windows  of  the 
thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries.  Perhaps  it  was  better 
to  cart  them  away  than  to  furbish  them  anew  with  gewgaw 
restorations.  But  modern  life  in  a  vast  city  could  not 
endure  this  plethora  of  obsolete  churches  and  useless  con- 
vents in  its  midst,  and  the  friars,  black,  white,  and  grey, 
had  to  go  with  all  their  belongings.  Dark  alleys  are  deli- 
cious in  etchings ;  but  they  are  the  nests  of  disease,  vice, 
and  death.  A  city  of  two  millions  cannot  breathe  within 
the  winding  lanes  which  sufficed  the  burghers  of  the  four- 
teenth century  within  their  gloomy  ramparts.  Haussmann 
and  his  myrmidons  may  have  amassed  fortunes  ;  but  the 
world  is  still  searching,  lantern  in  hand  like  Diogenes,  for 
a  wise,  just,  incorruptible  municipal  authority.  The  art 


406  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

which  has  created  modern  Paris  is  not  high  art,  is  not  true 
art,  is  in  many  ways  most  meretricious  art  ;  and  in  its  cJief 
d'ceuvre,  the  new  Opera,  it  has  reached  the  pinnacle  of 
vulgar  display.  But,  take  it  all  and  all,  Paris  can  show  us 
the  brightest,  most  inventive,  and  least  mesquin  street 
architecture  which  the  nineteenth  century  can  achieve, 
and  certainly  the  most  imperial  civic  organisation  which 
Europe  can  produce. 

There  is  much  to  be  said  on  all  sides  of  this  complex 
problem  ;  the  catholic,  the  legitimist,  the  republican,  the 
antiquarian,  the  artist,  the  poet,  the  socialist,  the  econo- 
mist, even  the  tourist,  may  be  listened  to  with  sympathy 
in  turn.  Let  us  gnash  our  teeth  at  the  tale  told  us  by  the 
student  of  old  art ;  let  us  drop  a  tear  over  the  wail  of  the 
dispossessed  orders  ;  let  us  linger  over  every  fragment  of 
the  past  which  the  historian  can  point  out  as  spared  in  the 
havoc  ;  let  us  listen  to  the  story  of  the  dispossessed  work- 
man ;  let  us  study  the  statistics  of  the  old  and  the  new 
city;  let  us  stroll  with  \hzfldnenr  on  the  boulevards;  but 
let  us  not  say  that  it  is  either  altogether  evil  or  altogether 
good.  Modern  Paris  is  the  creation  of  the  Revolution  of 
1789,  and,  like  most  of  the  creations  of  that  mighty  and 
pregnant  epoch,  it  has  the  soul  of  good  in  things  evil ; 
deplorable  waste  and  error  in  the  midst  of  inevitable  and 
indispensable  reform. 

A  city  is  made  to  live  in.  Now,  a  serious  defect  in  old 
Paris  was  that  it  was  a  city  in  which  men  died.  Down  to 
the  Revolution  of  1789,  the  annual  deaths  exceeded  the 
annual  births.  Since  the  Revolution  the  births  exceed  the 
deaths.  The  birth-rate  in  Paris  is  low,  and  the  death-rate 
is  high,  as  compared  with  that  of  London  and  English 
towns  to-day  ;  but  the  birth-rate  of  Paris  is  now  much  in 
excess  of  the  death-rate.  The  total  deaths  in  modern 
Paris  are  but  double  the  actual  deaths  in  1789,  though  the 


THE    TRANSFORMATION    OF    PARIS.  407 

population  is  now  nearly  four  times  as  great.  The  death- 
rate  of  old  Paris  was  far  higher  than  that  of  any  actual 
city  of  Western  Europe,  and  for  a  parallel  to  it  we  must 
now  go  to  the  cities  of  the  East.  The  death-rate  of  Paris 
is  still  high,  for  it  is  largely  increased  by  the  almost 
deliberate  destruction  of  infant  life.  But  before  the  Revo- 
lution, we  must  take  it  that  some  three  or  four  thousand 
lives  were  annually  sacrificed  to  insanitary  conditions.  The 
sanitary  condition  of  Paris  in  the  middle  of  the  last  cen- 
tury was,  indeed,  that  of  Cairo  or  Constantinople.  Drinking- 
water  taken  direct  from  the  Seine,  open  sewers,  cemeteries, 
and  charnel-houses  in  the  heart  of  the  city,  infected  and 
squalid  lanes,  dirt,  decay,  and  disorder  made  life  precarious, 
and  scattered  disease  wholesale.  The  marvel  is  that  pesti- 
lence was  ever  absent. 

This  was  no  accident ;  nor  was  it  due  to  apathy  or  igno- 
rance in  the  people  of  Paris.  It  was  a  direct  result  of  the 
Old  Regime  —  the  deliberate  act  of  the  Monarchy,  the 
Church,  and  the  Nobility.  Its  causes  were  political.  Paris 
presented  in  herself  an  epitome  of  all  the  vices,  follies, 
inhumanities,  and  solecisms  of  the  Old  System.  Every- 
thing official  was  effete,  barbarous,  injurious  to  modern 
civilisation  ;  all  that  prerogative,  privilege,  superstition, 
and  caste  could  do  to  crush  a  great  capital,  was  done.  No 
consideration  of  the  health,  comfort,  or  needs  of  the  great 
city  affected  Louis  xiv.  or  Louis  xv.  They  and  their  courts 
lived  at  Versailles,  given  up  to  ambition,  display,  or  vice. 
Paris  and  the  Parisians  existed  to  produce  fine  things,  to 
give  splendour  to  the  monarchy,  society  to  the  nobility,  fat 
benefices  to  the  church.  The  meanest  fraternity  of  friars, 
the  most  scandalous  abbe,  the  most  rapacious  courtier,  was 
of  more  account  than  the  corporate  officials  of  Paris. 
Vested  interests,  sacred  foundations,  privileged  rights, 
blocked  every  path  to  reform  and  progress.  The  king's 


408  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

palaces,  the  king's  fortresses,  the  king's  institutions  were 
inviolable,  sacred,  immutable.  An  obsolete  foundation  of 
bygone  superstition  was  the  cause  of  God.  And  the  ca- 
price of  a  great  noble  was  a  high  matter  of  state. 

Old  Paris  consisted  of  dark  and  crooked  lanes,  because 
in  the  Middle  Ages  cities  were  so  built.  To  build  new 
streets,  to  plan  fresh  thoroughfares,  would  disturb  some 
church,  destroy  some  oratory,  inconvenience  some  marquis, 
or  displace  some  convent.  To  pave  streets,  to  make  sewers, 
to  open  spaces,  to  remove  cemeteries,  to  supply  pure  water, 
and  to  obtain  fresh  air  would  cost  money,  would  affect 
privileges,  or  invade  some  right.  But  the  money  of  Pari- 
sians was  required  to  pay  the  king's  dues,  not  to  improve 
Paris.  All  privileges  were  above  the  law,  and  as  sacred  as 
the  Ark  of  the  Covenant.  '  Rights,'  in  the  sense  of  privi- 
leges, came  before  law,  before  necessity,  before  humanity, 
decency,  or  public  duty.  The  sains  populi  was  the  infima 
lex — the  lowest  and  last  consideration  which  authority 
recognised.  Prescription  and  the  will  of  an  absolute  des- 
pot —  these  were  the  sole  standards  of  public  convenience. 
And  the  result  was  that  they  made  permanent  and  astound- 
ing accretions  of  public  inconvenience.  Something  was 
done  by  Louis  xiv.  to  add  magnificence  to  the  capital  by 
some  royal  palaces,  churches,  and  boulevards ;  and  early  in 
the  reign  of  Louis  xv.  the  spirit  of  social  improvement,  which 
culminated  in  the  States-General  of  1789,  began  to  make 
itself  felt.  A  few  improvements  were  made,  new  streets 
were  built  on  the  outskirts,  the  cemeteries  were  closed, 
and  the  water  supply  was  reformed.  From  the  middle  of 
the  century  a  series  of  efforts  were  made,  and  not  the  least 
by  Turgot  and  by  his  father,  the  Provost.  But  before 
privilege  and  prerogative  the  best  efforts  failed.  It  needed 
a  revolution  to  reform  the  city  of  Paris.  And  the  Revolution 
not  only  reformed,  but  transformed  it  with  a  vengeance. 


THE    TRANSFORMATION    OF    PARIS.  409 

The  physical  disorder  of  old  Paris  was  merely  the  reflec- 
tion—  indeed,  but  a  pale  reflection  —  of  the  social,  politi- 
cal, moral  disorder  of  the  Old  Regime.  The  organisation 
of  the  city  was  a  chaos  of  competing  authorities,  a  tangle 
of  obsolete  privileges,  and  a  nest  of  scandalous  abuses. 
Anomalous  courts  jostled  and  scrambled  for  jurisdiction  ; 
ancient  gilds  and  corporations  blocked  every  reform ; 
atrocious  injustice  and  inveterate  corruption  reigned  high- 
handed in  the  name  of  king,  noble,  or  church.  A  valuable 
work  of  great  research  appeared  (June  1889),  under  the 
direction  of  an  important  commission  of  historians,  which 
throws  new  light  from  public  documents  on  the  condition 
of  Paris  under  the  old  system.1  We  may  see  in  it  an  as- 
tounding picture  of  misrule.  The  Parlement,  the  Hotel  de 
Ville,  the  CJidtelet,  the  Governor  of  Paris,  the  Governor  of 
the  Bastille,  the  Minister  of  Paris,  the  University,  the 
trade-gilds,  the  church,  the  religious  foundations,  all  claim 
privileges,  jurisdictions,  rights,  immunities,  which  cross  and 
re-cross  each  other  in  continual  conflict. 

There  was  no  real  municipality,  no  true  elective  repre- 
sentation of  the  citizens.  Certain  officials,  named  by  the 
Crown,  professed  to  speak  and  to  act  in  the  name  of  the 
city.  Civil  and  criminal  justice  was  shared  by  various 
bodies  under  quite  indefinite  authority.  The  Chdtelet  ab- 
sorbed in  the  seventeenth  century  no  less  than  nineteen, 
baronial  jurisdictions  ;  but  the  Archbishopric  and  several 
abbeys  retained  their  own  distinct  courts.  The  Clidtelet, 
the  Hotel  de  Ville,  the  church,  each  divided  Paris  into  dis- 
tinct sets  of  local  subdivisions.  Taxation,  public  works, 
justice,  police,  markets,  public  health,  even  hospitals  and 
charities,  were  under  the  control  of  different  authorities, 
with  no  defined  limits.  Interminable  disputes  between  the 

1  L}£tat  de  Paris  en  1789.  Etudes  et  Documents  sur  1'Ancien  Regime  & 
Paris.  H.  Monin.  Paris.  Jouast,  etc.,  etc.,  1889.  j 


4IO  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

different  authorities  ensued.  Of  the  streets,  one  in  ten  was 
a  cul-de-sac.  Although  the  area  of  Paris  is  now  six  or  seven 
times  greater  than  it  was  before  the  Revolution,  and  though 
the  population  is  nearly  four  times  as  great,  there  are  little 
more  than  twice  as  many  houses.  There  were  30,000  beg- 
gars in  Paris.  Down  to  1779  the  ancient  foundation  of 
St.  Louis,  the  Quinze-  Vingts,  held  an  immense  area  be- 
tween the  Louvre  and  the  Palais  Royal,  blocking  up  both, 
as  well  as  the  Rue  St.  Honore&wSi  the  Rue  Richelieu.  This 
enclosure,  which  was  a  privileged  asylum,  contained  a  pop- 
ulation of  from  five  to  six  thousand,  not  only  licensed  to 
beg,  but  bound  to  live  by  begging.  It  was  not  until  1786 
that  the  cemetery  and  charnel-house  of  the  Saints  Inno- 
cents was  suppressed.  It  is  hardly  credible  that  little 
more  than  a  hundred  years  have  passed  since,  in  the 
densest  quarter  of  Paris,  long  colonnades  of  grinning  skulls 
and  festering  burying-grounds  were  standing  where  now 
we  have  the  lovely  fountain  of  Lescot  and  Goujon,  trans- 
formed indeed,  and  almost  more  lovely  in  its  transforma- 
tion, in  the  centre  of  the  bright  and  glowing  square  that 
recalls  Verona  or  Genoa. 

The  censorship  of  all  writings  'contrary  to  law,  to  the 
Catholic  faith,  to  public  morals,  or  judicial  prerogative,' 
opened  a  wide  door  for  arbitrary  power.  In  the  years 
.immediately  preceding  the  Revolution,  the  Parlement  of 
Paris  suppressed  sixty-five  works.  One  of  these  is  con- 
demned as  tending  ' a  soulever  les  esprits.'  Another  is 
condemned  as  a  libel  on  Cagliostro !  Sunday  labour,  eat- 
ing meat  in  Lent,  neglecting  to  dress  the  house-front  on 
a  religious  ^procession,  playing  hazard,  'speaking  so  as  to 
alarm  the  public,'  are  some  of  the  grounds  of  a  criminal 
sentence.  The  most  revolting  public  executions  were 
common  in  all  parts  of  the  city.  As  if  to  accustom  all 
to  the  sight  of  cruel  punishments,  some  fifty  places  are 


THE    TRANSFORMATION    OF    PARIS.  411 

recorded  as  the  scenes  of  these  horrible  public  exposures. 
The  sentence  sets  out  the  details  of  these  executions  in 
all  their  hideous  particulars.  Ledit  so-and-so  shall  be 
taken  to  Notre  Dame,  where  his  hand  shall  be  chopped 
off,  then  taken  on  a  cart  to  another  place,  where  he  shall 
be  broken  alive  on  a  wheel,  and  so  left  'as  long  as  it  shall 
please  God  to  prolong  his  life  '  ;  then  his  body  shall  be 
burned  and  the  ashes  scattered  to  the  winds.  A  working- 
man,  for  stealing  some  linen,  is  condemned  to  be  hung  on 
a  gibbet  and  strangled  by  the  public  executioner.  It  was 
not  till  1780  that  preliminary  torture  of  an  accused  person 
was  abolished  :  torture  as  part  of  the  sentence  was  retained 
till  the  Revolution.  The  personal  punishments  included 
the  pillory,  branding,  flogging,  maiming,  strangling,  break- 
ing alive,  and  burning.  This  is  how  the  ancient  Mon- 
archy prepared  the  people  for  the  guillotine. 

The  Revolution  has  swept  away  all  this,  and  new  Paris 
has  sprung  to  life  out  of  the  Revolution,  like  Athene  from 
the  head  of  the  thunderer.  Out  of  extreme  confusion, 
symmetry  ;  out  of  ancient  privilege,  absolute  democracy  ; 
out  of  paralysis  of  rival  authorities,  intense  concentration 
of  authority  ;  out  of  squalor,  splendour ;  out  of  barbarism, 
the  latest  devices  of  civilisation.  Yet,  for  all  these  changes, 
Paris  is  not  Chicago  or  Washington ;  it  is  no  fine  new  city 
built  on  an  open  plain.  Her  nineteen  centuries  of  history 
are  still  there;  the  gay  boulevards  stand  on  the  founda- 
tion-stones of  a  thousand  structures  of  the  past ;  the  plac- 
ards on  each  omnibus  recall  the  names  of  mighty  centres 
of  faith,  wisdom,  devotion,  purity,  love.  The  religious  pas- 
sion, the  civic  ardour,  the  republican  zeal,  the  wit,  the 
science,  the  electric  will,  the  social  ideals,  the  devotion  to 
ideas  —  are  all  there  as  of  old 


CHAPTER  XV. 

THE    TRANSFORMATION    OF    LONDON. 

I.  London  in  1887. 

A  HUGE  city  like  this  of  ours,  with  such'  boundless  possi- 
bilities before  it  for  good  or  for  ill,  on  the  one  hand  per- 
petually becoming  more  unmanageable  and  more  exhausting 
to  life,  on  the  other  hand,  continually  throwing  up  unex- 
pected signs  of  vitality  and  hope  —  such  a  city  stands  at 
the  parting  of  the  ways.  It  is  already  by  far  the  most 
inorganic  mass  of  habitations  that  ever  cumbered  the 
planet,  and  to  the  bulk  of  its  population,  though  not  to 
the  fortunate  minority,  it  is  not  very  cheerful.  And  yet, 
even  now  it  is  the  healthiest  of  all  capitals  ;  and  in  certain 
aspects  of  a  city  one  of  the  best  ordered  ;  to  a  very  few, 
one  of  the  pleasantest.  Which  is  to  prevail  in  the  future 
—  the  boundless  evil  or  the  boundless  good  ? 

Take  the  first,  the  darker  side.  Here  is  the  htigest 
assemblage  of  buildings  ever  piled  by  men  on  one  spot  of 
earth.  For  three  centuries  one  of  the  great  fears  of  think- 
ing persons  has  been  the  enormous  growth  of  London  ; 
and  yet,  till  about  a  hundred  years  ago,  neither  its  popula- 
tion nor  its  area  were  what  we  should  now  call  abnormal. 
But  since  the  last  hundred  years  it  has  advanced  by  leaps 
and  bounds,  increasing  its  population  fourfold  within  this 
century  and  its  area  at  least  ten  or  fifteen  fold.  Even  in 
our  own  lifetime  the  area  of  London  has  increased  at  least 
fivefold,  and  its  population  between  two  and  three  fold. 

412 


THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  LONDON.         413 

So  that  now  we  have  a  continuous  population  of  some 
4,000,000  packed  in  an  area  of  more  than  one  hundred 
square  miles,  with  nearly  2000  miles  of  streets,  measuring 
hardly  anywhere  less  than  ten  or  eleven  miles  in  a  straight 
line. 

Every  year  70,000  souls,  roughly  speaking,  are  added  by 
immigration  and  births  ;  every  year  more  square  miles  are 
added  to  the  area.  Year  by  year  some  20,000  immigrants 
press  into  this  city :  that  is  the  population  of  a  fair  county 
town  ;  so  that  every  ten  years  there  is  added  to  London 
by  immigration  alone  a  city  as  large  as  Bristol  or  Lisbon ; 
and  by  the  entire  series  of  causes,  a  new  city  as  large 
as  St.  Petersburg  or  Vienna.  And  thus  already,  in  this 
corner  of  the  Thames,  there  is  huddled  together  about 
one-sixth  of  the  entire  population  of  England.  '  Where 
is  it  to  stop  ? '  we  ask,  as  the  tide  of  immigrants  pours  in, 
and  great  armies  of  builders  are  perpetually  laying  fresh 
acres  of  meadow  under  brick. 

Size  and  numbers  are  not  necessarily  bad  things  per  se. 
But  unhappily  the  size  and  numbers  of  London  have  alarm- 
ing consequences  of  their  own.  Great  cities  have  to  grow 
organically,  with  some  kind  of  self-adaptation  to  their  de- 
velopment. But  the  increase  of  London  defies  adaptation 
and  adjustment.  The  70,000  new  souls  a  year  arrive  before 
London  has  time  to  consider  what  she  can  do  with  them. 
The  bricks  pour  down  in  irregular  heaps,  almost  as  if,  in 
some  cataclysm  or  tornado,  it  were  raining  bricks  out  of 
heaven  on  the  earth  below.  The  huge  pall  of  smoke  gets 
denser  and  more  sulphurous,  stretching  out,  they  say,  some 
thirty  miles  into  the  country,  till  Berkshire,  Bucks,  Herts, 
and  Kent  are  beginning  to  be  polluted  by  its  cloud.  From 
Charing  Cross  or  the  Royal  Exchange  a  man  has  to  walk 
some  five  or  six  miles  before  he  can  see  the  blessed 
meadows  or  breathe  the  country  air.  Few  of  us  ever  saw 


4H  THE    CITY   IN    HISTORY. 

more  than  half  of  the  city  we  live  in,  and  some  of  us  never 
saw  nine-tenths  of  it.  We  all  live  more  or  less  in  soot  and 
fog,  in  smoky,  dusty,  contaminated  air,  in  which  trees  will 
no  longer  grow  to  full  size,  and  the  sulphurous  vapour  of 
which  eats  away  the  surface  of  stone.  The  beautiful  river 
—  our  once  silver  Thames  —  is  a  turbid,  muddy  receptacle 
of  refuse  ;  at  times  indescribably  nasty  and  unwholesome. 
The  water  we  drink  at  times  comes  perilously  near  to  be 
injurious  to  health.  Our  burying-places,  old  and  new,  are 
a  perpetual  anxiety  and  danger.  Our  sewers  pour  forth 
5,500,000  tons  of  sewage  per  week,  almost  all  of  it  waste- 
fully  and  dangerously  discharged.  An  immense  proportion 
of  our  working  population  are  insufficiently  housed,  in 
cheerless,  comfortless,  and  even  unhealthy  lodgings.  Not 
a  few  of  these  are  miserable  dens  or  squalid  cabins  unfit 
for  human  dwelling-place.  Every  few  years  some  epidemic 
breaks  out  which  carries  off  its  thousands.  In  some  four- 
fifths  of  London  the  conditions  of  life  are  sadly  depress- 
ing and  sordid,  with  none  of  the  advantages  which  city 
life  affords.  The  amusements,  such  as  they  are,  are  often 
unworthy  of  us ;  the  resources  of  health  and  recreation 
are  too  few ;  whilst  the  dangers  to  life,  to  morality,  to  the 
intelligence,  are  very  real  and  ever  present. 

Is  this  monster  city  again  to  double  and  treble  itself? 
its  water  supply  to  get  still  more  precarious  and  defective, 
are  its  dead  still  more  to  endanger  the  living,  its  dreari- 
ness to  grow  vaster,  and  its  smoke  even  thicker  ?  It  is  a 
strange  paradox  that,  whilst  those  who  have  the  means 
are  always  seeking  to  get  away  from  London,  those  who 
are  destitute  are  perpetually  pouring  into  London  ;  whilst 
it  is  the  ambition  of  every  well-to-do  Londoner  to  retire  to 
freedom  in  the  country  or  in  the  suburbs,  it  is  the  instinct 
of  every  countryman  in  distress  to  find  his  way  up  to  Lon- 
don. There  are  tens  of  thousands  who  prefer  to  loaf  or 


THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  LONDON.         415 

starve  in  the  streets  rather  than  to  work  in  comfort  in  the 
fields.  Nearly  one-third  of  the  annual  increase  of  London 
is  due  to  immigration  ;  and  the  immigrants  are  in  great 
measure  both  destitute  and  incapable.  Is  it  that  our  agri- 
cultural system  is  sorely  at  fault ;  that  labour  in  the  country 
is  become  so  flat,  stale,  and  unprofitable,  with  opportunities 
so  wretched,  hopes  so  few,  and  life  so  weary  and  sordid, 
that  the  countryman  at  all  risks  will  crave  the  crowd,  the 
glare,  the  excitement  of  the  city,  even  though  it  offers  an 
almost  certain  wretchedness  and  squalor?  If  this  be  so, 
if  our  civilisation  has  come  to  this,  that  the  labourer  finds 
the  country  intolerable,  a  complete  resettlement  of  rural 
life  is  at  hand. 

But  we  cannot  attribute  too  much  to  this  ;  for  this  vast 
and  rapid  increase  of  great  cities  is  a  feature  of  modern 
civilisation.  It  is  equally  marked  under  despotic  or  demo- 
cratic governments,  in  monarchies  and  republics,  with  a 
peasant  proprietary  or  a  system  of  great  domains,  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic,  in  every  race,  in  both  hemispheres, 
in  Asia,  Africa,  and  America,  as  well  as  in  Europe.  Paris, 
St.  Petersburg,  Berlin,  Vienna,  Rome,  Brussels,  New  York, 
Lyons,  Marseilles,  Milan,  Munich,  Moscow,  Turin,  Bombay, 
and  New  Orleans  have  increased  in  fifty  years  more  than 
London  ;  and  Glasgow,  Hamburg,  Philadelphia,  and  Chicago 
increase  at  a  far  higher  ratio.  So  the  increase  of  London, 
tremendous  as  it  is,  has  nothing  exceptional  about  it  but 
its  enormous  positive  volume.  The  increase  itself,  and 
even  the  rate  of  increase,  is  at  bottom  the  result  of  modern 
industrial  life  and  modern  mechanical  resources. 

Of  this  vast  problem,  or  wilderness  of  problems,  it  is 
enough  to  touch  on  one  or  two ;  and  those  rather  of  the 
simpler  and  material  sort.  Take  the  single  one  of  water 
supply,  a  necessity  of  life,  and  the  condition  of  health  of 
4,000,000  of  Englishmen.  It  is  inadequate  in  quantity, 


416  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

inconvenient  in  supply,  very  various  in  quality,  and  ex- 
posed to  one  or  two  immense  risks  of  pollution.  We  are 
at  times  drinking  water  that  is  minutely  but  sensibly  in- 
fected with  deposit.  Though  the  recuperative  energy  of 
moving  water  usually  restores  it  to  a  fairly  wholesome 
condition,  we  all  know  that  London  is  not  quite  safe  from 
a  catastrophe.  A  single  epidemic  might  any  summer 
make  the  water  of  London  as  deadly  as  the  climate  of 
Vera  Cruz.  Now,  the  death-rate  of  Vera  Cruz  in  London 
would  mean  an  extra  mortality  of  nearly  200,000.  The 
morbid  infection  of  the  Lea  and  the  Upper  Thames  would 
in  six  months  produce  a  pestilence  as  appalling  as  any  in 
History.  And  yet  for  twenty  years  we  have  talked  about 
a  safe  and  adequate  water  supply.  The  supply  of  London 
per  head  is  below  that  of  most  Continental  cities,  im- 
mensely below  that  of  most  American  towns,  and  about  a 
quarter  of  that  of  Rome.  The  house-cistern  system  is  one 
of  those  survivals  of  barbarism  which  shame  modern  me- 
chanical contrivance.  Its  dangers,  inconveniences,  and 
nastiness  are  the  text  of  every  sanitary  reformer.  And 
still  we  live  on  with  the  lead  cistern  and  the  ball-cock, 
whilst  our  statesmen  are  debating  about  a  railroad  to 
Uganda  and  the  delimitation  of  Siam. 

Turn  from  water  to  fire.  Our  means  in  London  of 
dealing  with  fire  are  far  below  that  of  every  wealthy  city 
in  the  world,  varying  from  one-third  to  one-tenth  of  the 
provision  which  the  most  advanced  nations  make.  It  is 
true  that  London  as  yet  has  escaped,  owing  to  its  modes 
of  construction  and  of  warming  and  its  general  habits. 
But  a  great  conflagration  in  London  is  not  impossible, 
and  the  means  of  dealing  with  it,  if  it  ever  came,  are  ludi- 
crously inadequate.  London,  with  its  boundless  wealth 
and  its  interminable  area,  has  a  fire  brigade  not  only  rela- 
tively, but  actually,  less  than  those  of  Paris,  Berlin,  New 


THE   TRANSFORMATION    OF    LONDON. 

York,  St.  Petersburg,  and  Hamburg.  Either  our  friends 
on  each  side  of  the  Atlantic  are  foolishly  timid,  or  we  in 
this  matter  are  criminally  negligent. 

London  has  swallowed  up  and  holds  festering  in  its 
midst  scores  and  scores  of  graveyards  which  still-  are  and 
long  will  be  a  danger  to  the  living.  Year  by  year  the 
vast  city  expands,  and  is  already  reaching  the  more  mod- 
ern cemeteries  which  it  is  about  to  engulf,  adding  further 
dangers  and  fresh  poison.  The  terrible  mortality  in  the 
larger  town  hospitals — often  double  that  of  small  country 
infirmaries  —  tells  its  significant  and  cruel  tale.  The 
whole  of  our  arrangements  for  mortuaries,  interment,  and 
the  due  check  on  contagion  are  utterly  in  the  rear  of  our 
resources  and  our  science.  What  a  picture  of  a  civilised 
community  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century !  A 
noble  river  turned  into  a  huge  open  sewer,  with  its  tide 
carrying  millions  of  tons  of  refuse  up  and  down  under 
our  eyes.  Contagion  scattered  broadcast  by  carelessness, 
ignorance,  greed.  Our  sewers  perpetually  discharging 
deadly  gases  into  the  rooms  where  our  children  and  our 
young  ones  are  asleep;  the  air  choked  with  vapours  inju- 
rious to  animal  and  even  vegetable  life  ;  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  our  workers  housed  in  lodgings  which  are  a 
standing  source  of  corruption,  misery,  and  disease. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  other  side  of  the  picture  — 
what  our  great  city  might  be,  ought  to  be,  will  be  —  if  we 
in  this  generation  and  the  next  can  only  be  brought  in 
time  to  know  our  duty,  our  urgent  necessities  and  our 
imminent  dangers.  I  am  very  far  from  thinking  all  this 
can  be  remedied  by  Act  of  Parliament,  and  like  the  carter 
in  yEsop's  fable  want  to  call  upon  the  Hercules  of  West- 
minster. We  are  all  so  much  bewildered  and  stunned  by 
the  whirl  and  scream  of  the  parliamentary  machine  that  if 
a  man  only  says  that  such  and  such  an  improvement  in 

2D 


41 8  THE   CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

our  life  ought  to  be  accomplished,  it  is  thought  that 
he  is  asking  for  an  Act  of  Parliament  to  carry  out  his 
end.  It  is  a  thing  for  society,  for  the  rich,  for  the  poor, 
for  the  thoughtful,  for  the  energetic,  for  the  clergy,  for 
the  municipalities,  for  the  reformers,  for  the  working  men 
and  the  working  women,  for  the  people  —  for  us  all  to  take 
up  and  to  work  on  till  we  get  it.  And  it  may  be  said : 
it  is  idle  to  appeal  to  the  public  about  the  death-rate  of 
cities,  about  sewers,  and  museums,  and  cemeteries,  and 
sanitary  homes  and  parks  for  the  people,  and  play-grounds 
for  the  children,  and  baths  and  wash-houses,  and  good 
schools.  No !  it  is  everything  to  have  a  true  and  sound 
notion  of  what  we  want  or  ought  to  have ;  to  have  a 
right  ideal  of  a  human,  healthful,  and  happy  city.  We 
can  all  do  something,  even  the  humblest  of  us,  to  get  a 
decent,  habitable  roof  over  our  heads  ;  to  see  that  our 
children  have  water  and  milk  to  drink  that  is  not  poison- 
ing them  ;  we  can  all  take  decent  precautions  not  to  spread 
disease  by  neglect,  folly,  and  ignorance.  And  we  can  all 
together  make  a  real  impression  on  those  who  have  the 
wealth  and  the  direction  of  society  upon  them,  if  we  make 
them  feel  that  you  are  no  longer  satisfied  with  rotting  old 
tenements  for  homes,  contaminated  water  to  drink,  and 
dismal,  joyless  miles  of  streets  to  live  in,  where  the  pure 
air  of  heaven  is  turned  into  a  pall  of  smoke.  We  can  tell 
those  who  have  the  wealth  and  the  power  that  the  lives, 
and  the  health,  and  the  comfort  of  the  great  masses  are 
the  very  first  of  all  their  duties  ;  that  the  contests  of  Radi- 
cals and  Tories  are  of  infinitely  small  importance  com- 
pared with  the  lives  of  the  people.  If  it  be  not  true  that 
Sam  fas — Sanitas,  omnia  Sanitas  —  if  health  and  comfort 
be  not  the  greatest  of  all  things — they  are  the  most 
urgent  of  all  things,  the  foundation  of  all  things. 

It  is  quite  true  that  the  death-rate  of  London  is  remark- 


THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  LONDON.         419 

ably  low,  but  it  ought  to  be  lower.  The  very  fact  that 
London  has  so  nobly  distinguished  itself  amongst  all  the 
capitals  of  Europe  is  proof  that  it  can  do  much  to  save 
life.  It  has  a  vast  deal  more  to  do,  One  of  our  greatest 
authorities,  Sir  Spencer  Wells,  speaking  in  the  face  of 
Europe  as  representing  the  sanitary  reformers  of  this 
country,  gave  it  as  his  deliberate  judgment  that  the  death- 
rate  of  our  great  cities  might  be,  and  ought  to  be,  reduced 
to  at  least  1 2  per  thousand  per  annum  —  that  is,  a  reduc- 
tion of  nearly  10  per  thousand,  not  far  off  half  the  deaths. 
There  have  been  some  weeks  of  recent  years,  when  Lon- 
don approached  within  measurable  distance  of  this  great 
ideal.  There  are  now  some  districts  in  the  west  inhabited 
by  the  rich  where  the  death-rate  is  at  times  below  even 
this  limit.  There  is  no  sanitary  authority  which  denies 
the  possibility  of  reaching  a  death-rate  of  12  per  thou- 
sand. It  would  mean  some  30,000  lives  saved  each  year 
in  London  alone. 

And  at  what  price  is  the  great  result  attainable  ?  The 
cost  of  an  African  war,  perhaps,  ten  years  of  engineering 
labour,  absolutely  wholesome  water  to  drink,  and  plenty 
of  it  to  wash  in  and  to  wash  with,  a  rational  and  healthy 
drainage  to  carry  off  poison  from  our  homes  —  sewer- 
gas  and  other  abominations  of  civilisation  in  the  stage 
of  blunder  would  become  as  much  things  of  the  past  as 
the  leprosy.  We  should  all  have  pure  milk,  clean  houses, 
air  with  no  sulphur  fumes  in  it,  open  spaces,  plenty  of 
play-grounds,  mortuaries  on  right  principles,  cemeteries 
wholly  away  from  the  living,  and  the  bestowal  of  the 
dead  no  longer  a  danger  to  the  living,  systematic  precau- 
tions against  contagion,  hospitals  reconstructed  on  scien- 
tific methods.  A  little  common  sanitary  knowledge  would 
be  made  a  matter  of  general  education.  There  would  be 
no  exhausting  hours  of  work,  no  starvation  wages,  no 


42O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

overcrowded,  ill-ventilated,  and  dangerous  factories,  less 
drink,  less  brutal  treatment  of  women  and  children,  more 
civilisation,  more  real  charity,  more  true  religion.  This  is 
the  price  at  which  the  death-rate  may  be  reduced  nearly 
one-half,  and  upwards  of  30,000  lives  a  year  saved  which 
now  perish  by  our  folly,  our  neglect,  and  our  crime. 

London  has  already,  as  compared  with  the  Continent, 
an  exceptionally  low  death-rate  ;  lower  by  20,  30,  even 
50  per  cent.,  than  some  other  capitals,  lower  than  almost 
any  large  town  in  Europe,  except  a  few  of  the  ports  in  the 
Baltic,  and  actually  one-half  of  the  death-rate  of  some  Rus- 
sian and  many  Eastern  cities.  The  death-rate  is  a  very 
complicated  and  treacherous  field,  and  we  know  that  Lon- 
don is  the  centre  which  attracts  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
youths  and  girls  in  the  prime  of  life,  who  come  here  and 
are  employed  in  service  and  in  factories,  unmarried  and 
necessarily  in  average  health.  That  undoubtedly  reduces 
the"  death-rate  ;  but  the  same  cause  applies  more  or  less 
in  all  great  towns  of  Europe  or  America,  and  (except  that 
London  absorbs  a  larger  number  of  domestic  servants  than 
either),  it  does  not  affect  London  more  than  it  affects  Paris 
and  New  York. 

It  is  quite  true  that  merely  to  keep  sickly  children  alive 
for  a  life  of  feebleness  and  disease  is  by  no  means  an 
unmixed  boon  ;  but  it  will  take  a  good  deal  to  convince  us 
that  a  high  death-rate  is  a  sign  of  civilisation.  We  may 
take  a  low  death-rate  as  the  basis  and  beginning  of  a  thriv- 
ing community.  London  has  distinguished  itself  above  all 
the  great  cities  of  Europe  by  its  low  death-rate.  The  very 
increase  of  population,  which  in  some  aspects  is  so  alarm- 
ing, is  not  due  to  any  exceptionally  high  birth-rate  in  Lon- 
don. Indeed,  the  birth-rate  is  far  below  the  standard  of 
the  eastern  half  of  Europe ;  nay,  it  is  below  that  of  most 
cities  in  Europe,  except  the  French  and  Italian  towns. 


THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  LONDON.         421 

The  increase  is  due  to  the  immense  interval  between  its 
moderate  birth-rate  and  its  very  low  death-rate.  Whereas 
the  deaths  exceed  the  -births  in  Naples  and  in  St.  Peters- 
burg, and  the  births  are  less  than  one  in  a  thousand  in 
excess  of  the  deaths  at  Madrid,  Buda-Pesth,  and  Rome, 
and  the  surplus  of  births  in  Paris  and  Lyons  is  less  than 
two  in  a  thousand,  in  London,  where  the  birth-rate  is 
below  that  of  the  majority  of  Continental  cities,  the  sur- 
plus of  births  over  deaths  is  thirteen  and  a  half  per  thou- 
sand, or,  say,  about  50,000  souls  a  year.  As  compared 
with  Naples  or  St.  Petersburg,  therefore,  London  saves 
some  50,000  human  lives  a  year  ;  as  compared  with  Ma- 
drid, Pesth,  and  Rome,  it  saves,  say,  45,000  lives  ;  as  com- 
pared with  Paris  and  Lyons,  it  saves  40,000  lives.  If  it 
can  do  this,  why  cannot  it  do  more  ?  Our  sanitary  authori- 
ties tell  us  that  it  can  do  more :  that  30,000  lives  a  year 
are  still  sacrificed  to  our  ignorance,  our  folly,  and  our 
crime. 

We  may  take  in  turn  a  few  of  the  ways  in  which  the 
lives  of  these  30,000  victims  a  year  may  be  saved  ;  and, 
with  their  lives,  the  infinite  sorrow,  suffering,  and  loss 
which  these  30,000  deaths  involve.  There  is  a  book  with 
a  most  happy  title,  the  instructive  record  of  a  most  useful 
life  —  I  mean  The  Health  of  Nations,  by  the  well-known 
reformer  Sir  B.  Richardson.  In  that  book  Dr.  Richard- 
son has  collected  the  writings,  described  the  schemes, 
and  explained  the  work  of  his  friend,  Edwin  Chadwick,  the 
Nestor  of  sanitary  reform,  the  Jeremy  Bentham  of  the  Vic- 
torian epoch,  the  pioneer  and  venerable  chief  of  all  health 
reformers.  Edwin  Chadwick,  himself  the  philosophical 
executor  and  residuary  legatee  of  old  Jeremy  Bentham  as 
a  social  and  practical  reformer,  in  extreme  and  hale  old 
age  —  he  was  born  in  the  last  century,  in  1800  —  was  still 
in  1887  hearty  and  energetic  in  the  cause  to  which  he  has 


422  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

devoted  sixty  years  of  his  life  —  the  great  cause  of  the 
Health  of  Nations.  The  Health  of  Nations  is  quite  as 
important  as  the  Wealth  of  Nations.  If  the  Health  of 
Nations  does  not  need  the  philosophical  genius  of  Adam 
Smith,  or  the  analytic  genius  of  Jeremy  Bentham,  it  needs 
a  spirit  of  social  devotedness  quite  as  serious,  and  a  prac- 
tical energy  in  the  apostle  quite  as  great.  As  Burke  told 
us  that  John  Howard  had  devoted  himself  to  a '  circum- 
navigation of  charity,'  so  Edwin  Chadwick  sixty  years  ago 
began  a  '  circumnavigation  of  sanitation,'  and  after  all  his 
voyages  he  has  at  length  finally  put  into  port. 

Of  all  problems,  the  most  important  is — water.  We 
are  drinking  water  that  at  times  is  contaminated  with 
sewage,  as  well  as  with  foul  surface  drainage,  and  that 
to  a  degree  which  under  possible  conditions  may  become 
deadly.  I  saw  not  long  ago  one  of  the  large  affluents  of 
the  Upper  Thames  poisoned  by  mineral  refuse  to  a  degree 
which  suddenly  killed  the  whole  of  the  fish.  This  garbage 
—  mineral  poison,  refuse,  and  decaying  fish  —  we  in  Lon- 
don had  to  drink.  It  is  true  that  such  are  the  forces  of 
nature  that  even  mineral  poison  and  stinking  fish  does  not 
kill  us  always  —  in  moderate  doses.  Were  it  not  for  the 
vis  medicatrix  natura  in  the  matter  of  water,  air,  and  soil, 
we  should  all  be  dead  men  some  morning,  the  whole  four 
millions  of  us  together.  This  want  of  abundant  pure  water 
is  one  of  the  most  crying  wants  of  our  age.  There  are  two 
or  three  modes  in  which  London  can  be  supplied  with 
wholesome  water.  Whether  it  is  to  come  out  of  the  chalk, 
whether  it  is  to  be  collected  out  of  several  of  the  southern 
rivers  at  their  head  sources,  whether  it  is  to  come  by  a  vast 
aqueduct  from  Bala  Lake,  the  West  Midland  hills,  or  from 
Ullswater,  we  need  not  discuss.  But  it  has  to  come  — 
pure,  abundant,  constant.  Ultimately,  I  believe,  there  will 
be  a  main  aqueduct  down  England  from  the  lakes  of 


THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  LONDON.         423 

Westmoreland,  sending  off  branch  mains  to  the  greater 
Northern  and  Midland  towns,  and  pouring  into  London  a 
river  like  the  Eamont  at  Penrith  —  an  inexhaustible  source 
of  pure  water,  just  as  the  Claudian  or  the  Julian  Aqueducts 
poured  their  rivers  into  Rome  —  Rome,  the  immortal  type 
of  all  that  a  great  city  ought  to  have  in  the  way  of  water 
supply. 

Let  us  away  with  all  the  nastiness  and  stupidities  of  cis- 
terns, with  their  dirt,  poison,  discomfort,  and  cost  ;  away 
with  the  ball-cock,  and  the  bursting  pipes,  and  all  the 
abominations  of  bungling  plumbers.  A  continuous  water 
supply  is  a  necessity  of  civilisation.  But  free  water  is  as 
much  a  necessity  of  civilisation  as  pure  water,  or  contin- 
uous water.  Water,  like  the  roadway,  is  a  public  not  a 
private  concern.  Neither  water,  air,  nor  soil  are  manu- 
factures like  bread,  clothes,  and  gas.  A  man  should  be  no 
more  charged  personally  for  water  by  a  commercial  com- 
pany than  he  should  be  charged  a  toll  for  walking  over 
London  Bridge,  or  taking  the  air  in  Hyde  Park.  It  con- 
cerns the  health  of  us  all  that  no  family  should  be  stinted 
in  their  water  supply,  or  even  should  stint  themselves. 
Roadways,  streets,  bridges,  parks,  embankments,  the  free 
use  of  air  and  earth,  ought  to  be  secured  us  by  public 
bodies,  under  public  control,  making  no  private  profit,  and 
having  no  private  interest,  and  supported  by  common  rates 
and  taxes,  and  so  ought  the  free  use  of  water  to  be. 

Water  we  want  unstinted  and  under  absolute  public 
control  for  cooking,  cleaning,  and  washing  in  our  homes, 
for  cleansing  the  streets,  for  fire  defence,  for  wash-houses 
and  public  baths,  for  adornment  and  recreation.  And  on 
every  one  of  these  grounds,  for  the  same  reason  that  it 
would  be  criminal  to  make  Hyde  Park  a  private  company 
and  let  them  charge  a  toll  at  the  gates  —  on  all  these 
grounds  we  require  Water  to  be  a  public  and  not  a  private 


424  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

interest,  a  common  advantage  of  a  civilised  community, 
and  not  a  commodity  for  shareholders  to  speculate  with 
and  to  sell  to  the  needy. 

Some  day,  I  trust,  we  shall  take  in  hand  our  rivers. 
We  have  already  done  much.  There  is  a  vast  deal  more 
to  do.  There  is  no  positive  reason  why  the  Thames  as  it 
flows  by  Westminster  Palace  should  not  be  as  bright  as 
when  it  reflects  Hampton  Court  on  its  surface.  Factories, 
works,  drainage,  refuse,  will  no  longer,  in  secret  and  in 
defiance  of  Parliament,  pollute  its  stream;  the  southern 
shores  will  be  embanked  like  the  northern;  and  the  sur- 
face drainage  of  this  metropolitan  area  and  its  whole 
sewage  will  not  be  discharged  pell-mell  into  a  tidal  river. 
Some  day,  I  believe,  our  two  or  three  millions  of  chimneys 
will  no  longer  pour  out  their  endless  pall  of  sulphur  and 
soot.  No  poisonous  gas  will  ever  enter  a  house ;  for 
mechanical  contrivances  will  suck  down  the  products  of 
refuse,  instead  of,  as  they  now  do,  force  them  up  into 
our  homes. 

Nor  need  we  doubt  that  we  shall  one  day  face  the  great 
problem  of  health  which  death  presents  to  us,  in  the  only 
way  in  which  these  vast  modern  cities  can  face  it  —  by  the 
system  of  cremation.  All  who  have  studied  the  facts  of 
cremation  well  know  how  idle  are  the  objections  on  the 
score  of  propriety,  decency,  solemnity,  or  the  concealment 
of  crime.  They  know  that  cremation  alone  affords  the 
absolutely  safe  means  of  bestowing  the  80,000  corpses 
which  each  year  casts  upon  our  sorrowing  hands.  The 
ordinary  objections  which  we  hear  are  but  melancholy 
remnants  of  childish  superstition.  There  are  objections  of 
weight  which  I  recognise  to  the  full ;  all  that  repugnance 
which  springs  out  of  the  hallowed  memory  of  the  buried 
remains,  the  local  sanctity  of  the  grave,  and  all  its  religious 
nncl  beautiful  associations.  No  one  can  respect  these 


THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  LONDON.         42$ 

more  than  I  do ;  no  one  can  more  heartily  wish  to  preserve 
them.  But  those  who  feel  them  have  never  made  real  to 
their  minds  all  the  noble  associations  and  resources  of  urn 
burial — one  of  the  most  ancient,  beautiful,  and  religious 
of  all  modes  of  disposing  of  the  dead.  Cremation,  in  its 
present  form,  absolutely  pure,  effective,  simple,  and  digni- 
fied as  it  is,  destroys  the  remotest  germs  of  deleterious 
power  in  the  loved  remains ;  but  it  does  not  annihilate  the 
remains  altogether.  The  solid  ashes  remain  far  more  pure 
and  perfectly  than  in  any  ancient  cremation  the  residuum 
of  the  body,  purified  seven  times  in  the  fire.  These  ashes 
are  appropriately  closed  in  an  urn.  They  can  be  buried,  if 
it  so  be  thought  best,  in  the  grave,  and  then  the  grave  will 
contain  the  body,  not  indeed  putrescent  in  horrible  decay, 
but  in  a  little  harmless  dust  in  a  case.  Cremation  need 
not  at  all  affect  the  practice  of  interment.  The  grave  may 
remain  undisturbed ;  the  sacred  earth  may  be  there  as 
now  ;  flowers,  as  now,  will  rise  up  and  bloom  over  the 
ashes.  We  the  survivors  may  come  and  stand  beside  the 
tombstone,  and  adorn  it  with  a  wreath  or  a  posy  as  now, 
and  think  over  her  and  him  who  rest  below.  But  though 
they  rest  there  as  truly  as  ever,  it  will  not  be  in  a  long  and 
lingering  process  of  abomination,  ghastly  and  dangerous 
to  the  living  and  dishonouring  to  the  dead.  The  great 
and  holy  work  of  Nature,  purifying  the  poor  insensible 
remains  which  she  had  taken  into  her  own  bosom,  will  be 
done,  not  in  a  lingering  and  loathsome  fashion,  but  with  a 
swift  and  beautiful  blaze  of  a  modern  scientific  gas  furnace 
which  in  a  few  hours  will  consume  the  limbs  that  have 
rested  for  ever,  and  will  transmute  them  into  a  permanent 
and  innocent  dust. 

But  it  is  in  the  name  not  only  of  the  health  of  the  living 
that  we  need  cremation  in  great  cities,  but  as  the  sole 
means  left  to  us  of  preserving  the  sanctity  of  the  tomb,  the 


426  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

religio  loci  of  the  dead.  Although  interment  may  long 
hold  its  ground  in  open  country,  and  even  partially  com- 
bined with  cremation  in  cities,  as  in  early  Christian  ages 
interment  and  cremation  existed  together,  urn  burial  of  the 
ashes  left  by  cremation  affords  us  surpassing  facilities  for 
art,  poetry,  sentiment,  and  devotion  in  our  ultimate  dis- 
posal of  the  dead.  The  sacred  dust  in  its  urn  can  be  fitly 
placed  in  all  sorts  of  places  ;  for  it  is  absolutely  innocuous, 
very  moderate  in  bulk,  and  easily  adapted  to  all  kinds  of 
uses.  It  may  be  placed  in  a  covering  tomb,  or  as  the 
centre  of  a  monumental  construction.  It  may  be  placed 
in  a  church,  in  a  cloister,  in  a  cemetery,  in  a  private  chapel, 
even  in  a  private  room.  Hence  the  receptacles  of  sacred 
ashes  need  not  be  —  as  now  they  must  be  or  ought  to  be 
—  at  a  wearisome  distance  from  the  vast  city  and  the  home 
of  the  survivors.  We  can  again  have  our  dead  beside  us, 
as  they  did  in  Roman  .times  and  in  mediaeval  times ;  but 
now  without  risk  or  inconvenience.  The  ashes  of  the 
greater  dead  might  rest  even  in  small  consecrated  chapels 
in  the  very  heart  of  the  city,  in  our  public  places,  or  even 
in  our  parks  and  churches.  But  for  the  general  dead  there 
is  that  beautiful  institution  the  cloister,  or  Campo  Santo. 
Those  who  know  the  lovely  Campo  Santo  at  Pisa,  or  at 
Bologna,  or  at  Genoa,  even  under  a  strict  system  of  inter- 
ment, and  will  imagine  what  such  a  Campo  Santo  or  cloister 
could  be  made  when  combined  with  the  Roman  system  of 
the  Columbaria,  or  cells  for  the  funeral  urns,  can  see  what 
a  vast  range  is  opened  to  the  preservation  of  the  remains 
in  ways  full  of  beauty,  piety,  and  solemnity.  The  cloisters 
where  our  dead  lie  need  not  be  at  any  distance  from  our 
midst  —  they  will  be  most  glorious  additions  to  our  city 
monuments.  The  old,  clammy,  ghastly,  unsightly,  useless 
city  churchyard  will  regain  its  uses  and  its  beauty  and 
lose  all  its  dangers.  The  new,  noisy,  untidy,  and  far-away 


THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  LONDON.         427 

cemeteries  will  also  be  at  an  end.  Beautiful  cloisters 
round  the  old  graveyards  of  our  parish  churches  will  be 
filled  with  chapels,  oratories,  monuments,  Columbaria,  and 
devices  of  every  kind  where  the  pure  ashes  of  our  dead  will' 
rest  each  in  its  own  urn,  and  with  its  own  record,  to  which 
we  can  come  when  we  please  to  gaze,  and  to  recall  in 
memory  with  resignation,  love,  and  outpouring  of  heart. 
Such  seems  to  be  for  great  cities  the  burial  of  the  future. 

Nor  can  we  doubt  that  our  whole  system  of  city  dwelling 
must  be  reformed.  Our  method  in  England  of  separate 
houses  for  each  family  has  great  and  precious  advantages ; 
and  those  who  know  its  blessings  will  be  sore  put  to  sacri- 
fice it.  But  sacrifice  it  we  must  at  last  in  our  great  cities. 
As  it  is,  it  is  in  London  for  the  most  part  the  privilege  of 
the  rich  and  the  comfortable.  The  enormous  mass  of  our 
London  workers  live,  as  they  are  forced  to  live,  in  lodgings 
or  tenements.  The  whole  of  the  old,  poisonous,  crumbling 
houses  of  older  London  are  doomed.  And  we  must  boldly 
face  the  necessity  of  rebuilding  London  some  day  for  the 
masses  in  blocks.  It  is  the  plan  universal  on  the  Con- 
tinent. The  enormous  waste  of  space,  the  indefinite  in- 
crease of  toil,  involved  in  our  present  London  system,  is 
alone  conclusive  as  to  our  practice.  If  London  were  con- 
structed on  the  tenement  plan  of  Paris  or  New  York, 
London  would  save  a  third  or  a  half  of  its  unwieldy  area. 
Again,  it  is  impossible  to  secure  adequate  air,  sanitary 
construction,  sanitary  appliances,  cleanliness,  convenience, 
and  freedom,  unless  the  homes  of  the  workers  be  ulti- 
mately constructed  on  the  collective  system.  Water, 
lighting,  washing,  drains,  cleansing,  provision  for  sickness, 
accident,  death,  and  the  like,  and,  above  all,  really  scien- 
tific construction  can  only  be  obtained  at  low  rents,  on  the 
collective  or  tenement  system.  We  need  not  reduce  them 
to  the  cheerless,  huge,  monotonous  barracks  which  are 


428  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

now  too  often  called  'model  dwellings.'  But  we  can  con- 
ceive in  the  future  the  working  homes  of  our  great  cities 
consisting  of  detached  blocks  of  not  less  than  five  or  six 
stories,  each  housing  not  less  than  twenty  or  thirty  fami- 
lies, with  common  appliances  for  cooking,  washing,  bathing, 
exercising,  playing,  and  reading,  which  would  supplement, 
not  supersede,  the  appliances  of  each  apartment.  And 
each  such  block  should  contain  in  itself  some  sort  of  recep- 
tacle, some  kind  of  sick-house  or  infirmary,  some  spare 
rooms  for  the  treatment  of  malignant  diseases,  and  for  the 
due  disposal  of  the  dead. 

We  need  not  here  discuss  the  government  of  London 
or  the  municipality  for  London.  That  is  a  political  and 
parliamentary  question,  and  we  all  must  desire  a  central, 
real  government  for  London,  on  the  sole  condition  that 
it  be  a  good  government.  But  for  the  material  resources 
of  London  we  need  local  dispersion,  decentralisation,  and 
local  organisation.  We  can  have  a  government  a  long  way 
off  from  us  ;  but  we  cannot  have  museums,  libraries,  baths, 
parks,  play-grounds,  schools,  hospitals,  and  cemeteries  a 
long  way  off  from  us  and  our  homes.  Or  if  we  do  they 
are  of  little  use  to  us.  Materially  —  though  not  govern- 
mentally  —  London  needs  to  be  treated  departmentally, 
locally,  and  separately.  We  may  see  the  signs  of  that 
movement  on  every  side.  There  are  the  People's  Palace, 
and  the  new  libraries,  the  new  town  halls,  the  new  schools, 
the  parks,  museums,  the  Toynbee  Halls,  which  are  spring- 
ing up  everywhere.  The  great  parliamentary  reform  of 
1885  which  grouped  London  into  sixty  divisions  is  a  step 
of  immense  importance.  The  parliamentary  borough  is 
about  large  enough  for  local  purposes.  Every  parliamen- 
tary borough  wants  its  own  organisation  for  its  museums, 
libraries,  baths,  parks,  and  play-grounds,  and  all  the  rest. 
The  children's  school  must  be  within  an  easy  walk.  So 


THE    TRANSFORMATION    OF    LONDON.  429 

must  the  men's  reading-room,  or  lecture-hall,  or  library. 
The  women  must  be  able  to  find  a  good  wash-house  at  the 
end  of  the  street  ;  a  man  after  his  Sunday  dinner  must  be 
able  to  take  his  family  to  get  fresh  air  and  rational  recrea- 
tion without  walking  more  than  a  mile  for  it.  The  children 
and  young  people  must  be  able  to  get  to  their  play-grounds, 
or  their  gymnasia,  or  their  concert,  or  dance,  walk  or  talk, 
without  being  tired  by  the  walk  before  they  get  there. 
For  there  is  one  thing  certain,  which  is  that  all  the  tele- 
graphs, and  railways,  and  all  the  inventions  of  modern 
science  have  not  made  human  legs  and  feet  able  to  go 
quicker  or  go  farther  than  they  used  ;  that  even  tramcars 
and  underground  railways  are  only  a  very  partial  substitute 
for  legs ;  and  that  until  science  invents  seven-leagued 
boots,  perfectly  available  for  every  man,  woman,  and  child, 
and  provided  gratis  at  every  house  door,  the  appliances 
of  civilised  life  must  be  within  an  easy  walk  of  people's 
homes. 

To  some  such  city,  then,  we  may  look  in  the  future.  A 
city  where  our  noble  river  will  flow  so  bright  and  clear 
that  our  young  people  can  swim  in  it  with  pleasure  as  they 
do  at  Paris.  A  city  where  we  shall  again  see  the  blessed 
sun  in  a  clear  blue  sky,  and  watch  the  steeples  and  the 
towers  as  they  do  at  Paris  shining  aloft  in  the  bright  air. 
A  city  which  at  night  will  be  radiant  with  the  electric 
light,  in  the  midst  of  which  fountains,  as  at  Rome,  will 
pour  forth  fresh  rivers  from  the  hills  —  a  river  in  our  case 
of  perennial  water  that  has  fallen  from  Snowdon  or  Hel- 
vellyn.  A  city  where  all  noxious  refuse  is  absolutely  un- 
known, where  no  deadly  exhalations  are  pumped  into  our 
homes,  where  a  child  can  drink  a  glass  of  water  from  the 
tap  or  the  street  fountain  and  sleep  in  its  garret  at  home 
with  entire  impunity,  a  city  where  typhus  and  typhoid, 
smallpox,  zymotic  disease,  shall  be  as  rare  as  the  plague, 


43O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

and  as  much  a  matter  of  history  as  the  leprosy.  A  city 
where  the  dead  shall  no  longer  be  a  terror  to  the  living,  no 
longer  despatched  imremembered  to  some  distant  burial- 
place,  but  kept  in  our  midst  —  at  once  a  source  of  reverent 
memory  and  of  beautiful  adornment.  A  city  where  pre- 
ventable disease  is  a  crime  to  be  charged  against  some 
one,  and  an  opprobrium  to  the  district  in  which  it  breaks 
out,  like  a  murder  or  a  burglary.  A  city  where  no  child 
shall  go  untaught  because  it  has  no  suitable  school  at 
hand.  A  city  where  no  man  should  go  without  books, 
pictures,  music,  society,  art,  exercise,  or  religion,  because 
there  were  no  free  libraries  at  hand,  or  no  museums  open 
when  he  was  at  leisure  after  work,  no  galleries  to  look  at 
on  a  Sunday,  no  concerts,  no  parks,  no  play-grounds  within 
reach,  no  free  seats  in  a  church  which  he  cared  to  enter. 

II.  London  in  1894. 

The  Local  Government  Act  of  1888  has  undoubtedly 
added  a  new  impulse  to  that  transformation  of  London, 
which  historic  causes  of  European  range  had  made  neces- 
sary for  more  than  a  generation,  and  which  had  been  stim- 
ulated anew  by  the  Parliamentary  Redistribution  Act  of 
1885.  With  the  political  aspect  of  these  Acts,  and  with 
the  policy  of  the  London  County  Council,  we  have  no 
occasion  to  concern  ourselves  in  these  pages.  But  the 
effect  of  this  great  municipal  reform  on  the  evolution  of 
London  as  a  historic  city  is  too  momentous  to  be  passed 
in  silence. 

In  the  first  place,  London,  which  a  generation  ago  was 
an  inorganic  mass  of  Parishes  variously  controlled  by 
obscure  Vestries,  has  been  showing  in  the  last  decade 
unexpected  tendencies  towards  organic  unity  and  to  evolve 
an  internal  organisation.  The  organic  unity  has  been 


THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  LONDON.         431 

adjourned,  in  spite  of  heroic  efforts  on  many  sides,  by  the 
natural  rivalries  between  the  new  Council  and  the  historic 
Corporation,  by  differences  between  the  two  Houses  of 
Parliament,  and  by  the  protracted  crisis  in  the  political 
world.  Of  all  these  causes  (temporary  as  true  patriots 
hope)  nothing  will  be  said  here.  In  the  meantime  the 
spontaneous  organisation  of  London  into  an  aggregate  of 
cities  has  been  one  of  the  most  striking  of  modern  move- 
ments. It  has  been  greatly  stimulated  by  the  two  political 
reforms  which  created  650,000  voters  for  London,  and 
divided  it  into  numerous  boroughs.  These  have  become 
real  civic  organisms  of  a  manageable  size  ;  and  they  have 
naturally  developed  a  kind  of  local  patriotism,  such  as  was 
hardly  possible  to  grow  up  in  the  vague  welter  of  an  un- 
known and  unknowable  '  Metropolis.' 

The  ultimate  destiny  of  this  huge  agglomeration  of 
houses  is  now  vested  in  the  hands  of  the  vast  masses  of 
the  working  population.  They  have  far  more  keen  inter- 
ests in  the  city  than  their  wealthier  neighbours,  who  look 
on  London  as  a  centre  of  labour,  amusement,  or  struggle 
for  a  season  or  a  period,  whilst  they  often  '  get  away  '  from 
it,  and  hope  at  last  to  retire  to  a  calmer  place.  In  the 
meantime,  the  richer  classes  seldom  know  London  as  a 
whole,  or  care  for  it  as  their  home,  or  regard  it  as  having 
any  claim  on  them  as  their  city.  Far  different  is  this  to 
the  working  men  :  to  whom  London  is  their  home,  their 
'  county,'  their  permanent  abode.  It  is  a  city  which  they 
quit  only  for  a  few  hours  or  days,  which  many  of  them 
are  forced  to  traverse  from  end  to  end  under  the  exigen- 
cies of  their  trade,  where  they  expect  to  pass  their  old 
age  and  to  lay  their  bones.  The  healthiness,  convenience, 
pleasantness  of  London,  are  all  in  all  to  them  and  to  their 
household.  Mismanagement  is  to  them,  and  to  those  dear 
to  them,  disease,  discomfort,  death.  There  is  every  reason 


432  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

to  look  forward  to  the  complete  transformation  of  London 
into  an  organic  city,  with  a  people  proud  of  its  grandeur 
and  beauty,  so  soon  as  the  new  institutions  have  been 
fully  matured.  We  have  seen  a  local  municipal  patriotism 
break  forth  with  extraordinary  rapidity  and  energy  in  sev- 
eral of  the  new  boroughs,  such  as  Battersea,  Chelsea,  and 
St.  George's-in-the-East.  And  this  interest  in  city  life  will 
grow  and  deepen,  as  it  has  done  in  Midland  and  Northern 
towns,  until  ultimately  we  may  look  to  see  London  as  a 
whole  develop  the  spirit  of  pride  and  attachment  which  the 
great  cities  of  the  Middle  Ages  bred  in  their  citizens  of  old. 

The  big  collective  problems  which  deal  with  Water,  with 
Fire,  with  the  Sick,  with  the  Dead,  with  central  Communi- 
cations, and  with  the  Housing  of  the  poor  population  — 
can  only  be  undertaken  by  a  supreme  central  municipality, 
but  not  by  vestries,  or  boroughs.  And  unhappily  in  Lon- 
don no  supreme  municipality  has  as  yet  a  free  hand,  or 
can  count  on  the  aid  of  the  Legislature.  But  in  spite  of 
division  of  authority  and  legislative  obstacles,  not  a  little 
has  been  done  and  much  more  has  been  attempted  and 
prepared  in  every  one  of  these  departments.  It  is  fair  to 
say  that  both  the  ancient  Corporation  and  the  County 
Council  have  striven  to  attain  these  ends  ;  and  in  not  a 
few  cases  with  combined  energies  and  resources.  And 
although  in  the  case  of  the  Water  Supply  no  final  solution 
has  been  reached,  an  immense  amount  of  scientific  study 
has  been  directed  to  the  problem  ;  and  a  great  improve- 
ment both  in  quantity  and  quality  has  been  obtained.  At 
the  same  time  determined  efforts  and  a  large  expenditure 
have  visibly  improved  the  condition  of  our  great  river; 
and  fill  us  with  hope  that  living  men  may  yet  come  to  see 
a  pure  and  healthy  Thames. 

The  great  problem  of  how  to  bring  London  up  to  the 
level  of  its  position  in  the  world  and  to  make  it  a  really 


THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  LONDON.         433 

noble  and  commodious  city  has  been  continually  attacked  : 
as  yet  with  incomplete  results  and  a  better  understanding 
of  the  difficulties  which  beset  it.  It  is  mainly  a  financial 
and  political  question.  The  greatest  and  richest  city  in 
the  world  is  also  the  city  which  now  seems  to  practise  the 
most  rigid  economy  in  its  own  improvement.  With  the 
greatest  river  of  any  capital  in  Europe,  with  boundless 
energy,  wealth,  and  opportunities,  London  is  put  to  shame 
by  Paris,  Berlin,  Vienna,  Rome,  and  New  York.  London, 
it  is  true,  has  no  mind  to  follow  the  monstrous  extrava- 
gance which  has  imposed  crushing  burdens  on  so  many 
Italian  cities.  But  it  will  not  even  follow  the  honourable 
example  of  Manchester,  Liverpool,  Glasgow,  Birmingham, 
and  Nottingham.  The  London  Council  is  housed  in  hired 
makeshifts,  and  London  communications  are  indefinitely 
adjourned.  This,  however,  is  entirely  a  financial  and  polit- 
ical question.  With  the  existing  system  of  finance  and  in 
the  equilibrium  of  political  parties,  it  has  been  the  fixed 
resolve  of  the  Council  to  throw  no  fresh  burdens  on  the 
occupying  ratepayer. 

Yet  in  spite  of  legislative  obstacles,  within  five  years  the 
number  of  the  public  Parks,  Open  Spaces,  and  Play-grounds 
has  been  more  than  doubled,  and  their  public  usefulness 
immeasurably  increased.  The  material,  the  stations,  and 
the  staff  devoted  to  extinguish  fires  have  been  very  largely 
augmented  ;  and  further  increase  is  contemplated  ;  so  that 
the  army  required  for  fighting  urban  conflagrations  may 
ere  long  be  brought  up  to  the  level  of  modern  civilisation. 
Great  efforts  are  also  being  made  to  arrest  infectious 
disease,  to  suppress  nuisances,  to  prevent  contamination 
of  food,  to  condemn  insanitary  dwellings,  to  secure  just 
weights  and  measures,  and  to  re-house  the  people  in  com- 
fortable and  healthy  homes.  When  we  consider  how  much 
has  been  done  within  the  last  few  years  to  increase  the 

2E 


434  THE    CITV    IN    HISTORY. 

healthiness,  the  convenience,  the  pleasantness  of  London 
for  the  masses  who  inhabit  it  in  permanence,  there  is 
ground  to  trust  that  the  reorganisation  of  the  great  city 
has  begun.  Even  in  the  costly  and  difficult  problem  of 
trans-fluvial  communications  the  work  has  been  taken  in 
hand.  London  presents  in  this  matter  more  arduous  prob- 
lems than  any  European  capital.  But  the  Tower  Bridge, 
the  Blackwall  Tunnel,  the  steam-ferry,  and  the  rebuilding 
of  old  bridges  that  is  projected,  will  do  something  to  meet 
this  urgent  want. 

The  side  wherein  London  still  most  visibly  halts  is  in  the 
street  improvements  and  new  communications  so  loudly 
demanded  for  years.  This,  however,  is  an  operation  enor- 
mously costly  and  beset  with  complex  parliamentary  diffi- 
culties. Until  these  are  solved,  and  the  conflict  on  the 
form  and  incidence  of  municipal  taxation  is  decided,  we 
cannot  expect  much  to  be  done.  But  the  question  has 
already  been  stirred  in  all  its  forms ;  and  many  schemes 
have  been  put  before  the  public  and  parliament.  London 
has  many  noble  features,  in  its  great  river,  its  fine  parks, 
its  position  astride  of  the  Thames,  and  its  northern  heights 
gradually  sloping  down  to  the  embankment.  But  it  has 
vast  arrears  of  work  to  make  up  before  it  can  be  counted 
a  commodious  or  splendid  city.  There  are  large  parts  of 
London  where  crooked  lanes  and  decayed  houses  remain 
almost  as  they  were  built  after  the  fire  of  1666.  The 
urgent  problem  now  is  to  secure  better  thoroughfares  from 
north  to  south.  Below  Vauxhall  Bridge  not  a  single  car- 
riage bridge  has  been  added  for  two  generations,  whilst 
the  population  has  increased  threefold.  The  trans-fluvial 
communication,  including  the  enlargement  and  rebuilding 
of  existing  bridges,  and  the  approaches  to  these  both  north 
and  south,  needs  at  this  hour  to  be  at  least  doubled  in 
number  and  carrying  power. 


THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  LONDON.         435 

Amongst  the  larger  problems  still  awaiting  solution  for 
the  material  improvement  of  London  are  :  — 

1.  The  completion  of  the  embankment  of  the  river  on 

both  sides  between  Battersea  and  Blackfriars,  with 
due  provision  for  continual  easy  access  to  the 
embankment,  and  with  docks  at  suitable  stations 
within  it. 

2.  Improved  access  to  the  existing  bridges,  north  and 

south. 

3.  New   carriage   bridges,  at  least  at  Lambeth  and  at 

Charing  Cross. 

4.  A  direct  avenue  connecting  the  three  great  northern 

railway  termini  with  the  Waterloo  terminus  and 
with  Charing  Cross. 

5.  Connections  of  Holborn  with  the  Strand,  the  British 

Museum  with  Somerset  House,  Victoria  Terminus 
with  South  Kensington  and  Lambeth,  Ludgate  Hill 
with  Cheapside. 

6.  The   reconstruction    of   Covent   Garden  and   its  ap- 

proaches and  connection  of  it  with  the  Courts  of 
Justice  and  with  the  north. 

7.  The  reconstruction  of    the  Main  Drainage   system, 

including  the  discharge  of  sewage  to  the  sea. 

8.  The  re-housing  of  the  people  displaced  from  decayed 

insanitary  areas. 

The  minor  improvements  in  every  outlying  parish  and 
suburb  are  far  too  many  and  complex  to  be  treated  here. 

These  undertakings,  together  with  a  suitable  building 
for  the  government  of  London  to  work  in,  may  occupy  the 
energy  and  resources  of  a  whole  generation.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  calculate  the  enormous  loss  in  money,  in  comfort, 
in  health,  in  labour,  wasted  by  millions  of  people  strug- 
gling to  reach  each  other  through  crowded,  narrow,  and 


THE   CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

circuitous  streets.  Nor  can  we  easily  estimate  the  evils 
of  pinching  the  government  of  a  great  capital  by  niggardly 
supply  of  the  material  appliances  of  its  task. 

The  first  thing  is  to  make  our  city  a  healthful  home  for 
the  people.  The  next  is  to  furnish  it  abundantly  with  all 
the  resources  of  civic  life  —  one  of  the  primary  of  which 
is  adequate  means  of  transit.  The  third  is  to  invest  it 
with  dignity,  impressiveness,  and  beauty.  The  people  who 
now  have  the  destinies  of  their  own  city  in  their  own 
hands  will  not  long  remain  satisfied  with  squalor,  ugliness, 
and  discomfort.  The  civic  patriotism  of  London  has  lain 
dormant  for  centuries,  but  in  our  generation  it  is  reviving. 
And  we  may  hope  that  ere  the  twentieth  century  is  far 
advanced,  it  may  create  a  new  London  worthy  of  its  past 
history  and  its  vast  opportunities. 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

THE   SACREDNESS   OF   ANCIENT   BUILDINGS.1 

A  TORSO  from  the  hand  of  Pheidias,  a  portrait  by  Titian, 
a  Mass  by  Palestrina  or  Bach,  a  lyrical  poem  of  Milton, 
an  abbey  church  of  the  thirteenth  century  —  are  all  works 
of  art ;  matchless,  priceless,  sacred  :  such  as  man  on  this 
earth  will  never  replace,  nor  ever  again  see.  They  are, 
each  and  all,  that  which  are  a  great  life,  or  a  memorable 
deed  :  once  spent,  they  can  never  be  repeated  in  the  same 
way  again,  and  yet,  once  lived,  or  once  achieved,  they 
make  the  world  to  be  for  ever  after  a  better  place.  And 
these  inimitable  works  are  not  only  amongst  the  heirlooms 
of  mankind ;  but  they  are  records  of  the  life  of  our 
fathers,  which  concentrate  in  a  single  page,  canvas,  block 
of  stone,  hymn,  or  it  may  be,  portal,  as  much  history  as 
would  fill  a  library  of  dull  written  annals.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  beauty,  of  knowledge,  of  reverence,  these  works 
of  art  are,  as  the  historian  of  Athens  said,  'an  everlasting 
possession.' 

Yet  how  strangely  different  is  the  care  with  which  we 
treat  the  statue,  the  picture,  the  music,  the  poem,  from  the 
treatment  we  give  the  church — the  church,  one  would 
think  the  most  sacred  of  all.  It  is  not  so  with  us.  We 
preserve  the  torso,  or  the  portrait  —  we  restore  the  church. 
We  give  it  a  new  inside  and  a  fresh  outside.  We  deck  it 
out  in  a  brand-new  suit  to  cover  its  nakedness.  A  com- 

1  An  address  given  at  the  Annual  Meeting  of  the  Society  for  the  Preserva- 
tion of  Ancient  Buildings,  1887.  Contemporary  Review,  vol.  52. 

437 


438  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

mittee  of  subscribers  choose  the  style,  the  century,  into 
which  it  shall  be  transposed  ;  they  wrangle  in  meetings,  in 
rasping  letters,  and  corrosive  pamphlets,  as  to  carrying  on 
an  early-pointed  arcade  in  the  lady-chapel,  or  as  to  intro- 
ducing a  gridiron  mass  of  perpendicular  tracery  in  the 
west  window.  The  chapter,  the  subscribers,  the  amateur 
archaeologists,  each  have  their  pet  style,  sub-style,  and 
epoch,  their  fancy  architect,  or  infallible  authority  in  stone, 
antiquities,  and  taste.  Between  them  the  church  is  gutted, 
scraped,  refaced,  translated  into  one  of  those  brand-new, 
intensely  mediaeval,  machine-made,  and  engine-turned  fab- 
rics, which  the  pupils  of  the  great  man  of  the  day  turn 
out  by  the  score.  This  is  how  we  treat  the  church. 

Imagine  the  tenth  part  of  this  outrage  applied  to  statue, 
picture,  hymn,  or  poem.  Suppose  the  Trustees  of  the 
British  Museum  were  to  call  in  Mr.  Gilbert  and  commis- 
sion him  to  restore  the  Parthenon  torsos,  to  bring  the 
fragments  from  the  Mausoleum  up  to  the  style  of  the 
Periclean  era.  Suppose  the  Ministry  of  Fine  Arts  in 
France  restored  the  arms  of  the  Melian  Aphrodite  in  the 
Louvre,  or  the  Pope  restored  the  legs,  arms,  and  head  to 
the  torso  beloved  by  Buonarroti.  Europe,  in  either  case, 
would  ring  with  indignation  and  horror.  Time  was,  no 
doubt,  when  these  things  were  done,  and  done  by  clever 
sculptors  in  better  ages  of  art  than  ours.  But  we  may  be 
fairly  sure  that  it  will  never  be  done  again. 

Pictures,  we  know,  have  been  restored ;  and,  perhaps, 
on  the  sly  are  restored  still.  Years  ago  I  saw  a  mis- 
creant painting  over  the  '  Peter  Martyr '  of  Titian  in  the 
Church  of  SS.  Giovanni  e  Paolo  ;  and  it  would  have  been 
a  condign  punishment  if  the  fire  which  consumed  it  had 
caught  him  red-handed  in  the  act.  They  have  daubed 
Leonardo's  '  Cenacolo '  till  there  is  nothing  but  a  shadow 
left.  But  though  a  sacrilegious  brush  may  now  and  then 


THE    SACREDNESS    OF    ANCIENT    BUILDINGS.  439 

be  raised  against  an  ancient  Master  (just  as  murder,  rape, 
and  arson  are  not  yet  absolutely  put  down),  even  our  great- 
great-grandfathers,  who  made  the  grand  tour  and  'collected' 
in  the  days  of  Horace  Walpole,  never  added  powder  and  a 
full  wig  to  one  of  Titian's  Doges,  or  asked  Zoffany  to  finish 
a  chalk  study  by  Michael  Angelo. 

I  do  not  know  that  there  ever  was  a  time  when  people 
restored  a  poem  or  a  piece  of  music.  Certainly  Colley 
Gibber  restored  some  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  introducing 
bon  ton  into  'Hamlet'  and  'Richard  in.'  And  Michael 
Costa  would  interpolate  brass  into  Handel's  '  Messiah.' 
But  in  any  world  that  claims  a  title  to  art,  taste,  or  cult- 
ure, to  falsify  a  note  or  a  word,  either  in  music  or  in  poem, 
is  rank  forgery  and  profanity  —  felony  without  benefit  of 
clergy.  Manuscripts  are  searched  with  microscopes  and 
collated  by  photographs  to  secure  the  ipsissima  verba  of 
the  author.  And  the  editor  who  '  improved  '  a  single  line 
of  '  Lycidas '  would  be  drummed  out  of  literature  to  the 
'  Rogue's  March.' 

In  our  day,  happily,  poem,  music,  picture,  and  statue  are 
preserved  with  a  loving  and  religious  care.  Picture  and 
statue  are  cased  in  glass  and  air-tight  chambers ;  for  we 
would  not  beteem  the  winds  of  heaven  visit  their  face  too 
roughly.  The  rude  public  are  kept  at  arms'-length  ;  and 
in  some  countries  are  not  suffered  so  much  as  to  look  at 
the  books,  engravings,  and  paintings  for  which  they  have 
paid.  Worship  of  an  old  poet  is  carried  to  the  point  of 
printing  his  compositions  in  the  authentic  but  unintelli- 
gible cacography  he  used.  And  as  to  old  music,  reverence 
is  carried  so  far  that  too  often  we  do  not  perform  it  at  all, 
I  suppose  for  fear  that  a  passage  here  and  there  may  not 
be  interpreted  aright. 

Go  to  Sir  Charles  Newton  or  Mr.  Murray,  and  tell  him 
that  the  'Theseus'  and  'Ilissus'  in  the  Elgin  Room  (I  use 


440  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

the  old  conventional  names)  are  sadly  dilapidated  on  their 
surface,  and  that  you  could  restore  their  skins  to  the  orig- 
inal polish ;  or  propose  to  repaint  the  Panathenaic  frieze 
in  the  undoubted  colours  used  by  Pheidias.  Tell  Sir 
Frederick  Burton  or  Mr.  Poynter  that  the  lights  *in  the 
'  Lazarus '  and  the  '  Bacchus  and  Ariadne '  have  plainly 
gone  down  ;  and  that  you  will  carry  out  the  ideas  of  Sebas- 
tian and  Titian  by  heightening  them  a  little.  Tell  him 
that  'Alexander  and  the.  Family  of  Darius'  is  full  of 
anachronisms,  and  that  you  will  re-robe  the  figures  with 
strict  attention  to  chronology  and  archaeology.  I  should 
like  to  see  the  looks  of  these  public  servants  when  you 
proposed  it,  as  I  should  like  to  have  seen  Michael  Angelo 
watching  the  '  Breeches-maker '  who  clothed  the  naked 
saints  in  his  Sistine  '  Last  Judgment.' 

Statue,  picture,  book,  music,  are  preserved  intact  with 
reverential  awe.  Not  but  what  some  of  them  have  suffered 
too  by  time,  get  utterly  dilapidated,  are  in  risk  of  perish- 
ing, have  become  mere  fragments,  or  offer  tempting  ground 
for  ambitious  genius.  The  'Aphrodite'  of  Melos  is  still 
a  riddle  :  the  torso  of  the  Vatican  is  a  very  sphinx  in  stone, 
a  mass  of  marble  ever  propounding  enigmas,  ever  reject- 
ing solutions.  It  is  a  block  as  it  stands :  head,  arms,  legs, 
and  action  would  make  it  a  statue.  The  'Cenacolo'  of 
Milan  has  long  been  a  mere  ghost  of  a  fresco,  faint  as  the 
last  gleam  of  a  rainbow.  There  are  still  whole  choruses 
of  ^Eschylus  to  restore ;  and  Shakespeare  is  certainly  not 
responsible  for  every  scene  in  his  so-called  works.  Liter- 
ature and  Art  are  full  of  works,  either  injured  by  time, 
or  left  incomplete  by  their  authors,  or  such  as  modern 
research  could  easily  purge  of  their  anachronisms,  incon- 
sistencies, and  general  defects. 

It  is  in  one  art  only  that  modern  research  dares  this 
outrage.  Great  works  of  architecture  are  not  exactly  on 


THE    SACREDNESS    OF    ANCIENT    BUILDINGS.  44! 

the  same  footing  with  great  works  of  sculpture,  of  paint- 
ing, of  music,  of  poetry.  They  differ  from  all ;  and  I  will 
presently  consider  these  differences.  But  great  works  of 
architecture  are,  like  all  great  works  of  art,  matchless, 
priceless,  and  sacred.  They  are  absolutely  beyond  re- 
newal. It  is  easier  to  copy  Titian's  '  Entombment '  than 
the  portal  of  Chartres  or  Notre  Dame  —  as  they  once 
stood,  and  stand  no  more.  Each  great  work  of  architect- 
ure is  also  unique:  completely  distinct  from  every  work 
that  ever  was  or  ever  will  be.  Giotto's  Campanile,  the 
Duke's  Palace  at  Venice,  stand  alone —  must  we  say  stood 
alone?  —  like  Hamlet  or  Lear,  'remote,  sublime,  and  in- 
accessible.' A  man  who  wanted  to  'continue'  Giotto's 
Campanile,  or  add  a  new  story,  and  enlarge  the  Palace  at 
Venice,  is  the  kind  of  man  who  would  'continue'  the  Iliad 
or  dramatise  the  Divine  Comedy  for  the  Lyceum  stage. 

In  all  ways  the  great  building  is  worthy  of  a  deeper 
reverence,  is  consecrated  with  a  profouncler  halo  of  social 
and  historical  mystery  than  any  picture  or  any  statue  can 
be.  Of  the  five  great  arts,  that  of  building  is  the  only  one 
which  adds  to  its  charm  of  beauty  the  solemnity  of  the 
genius  loci.  It  is  the  one  art  which  is  immovably  fixed  to 
place ;  the  rest  are  migratory  or  independent  of  space. 
Poetry  and  music,  not  being  arts  of  form,  are  not  confined 
to  any  spot.  Statues  and  paintings,  though  they  can  only 
be  seen  in  some  spot,  may  be  carried  round  the  world  and 
set  up  in  museums  and  galleries.  But  the  building  belongs 
for  ever  to  the  place  where  it  is  set  up.  It  is  incorporated 
with  the  surroundings,  the  climate,  the  people,  the  site, 
where  it  first  rose.  No  museum  can  ever  hold  it ;  it  is  not 
to  be  catalogued,  mounted,  framed,  or  classed  like  a  coin 
or  a  mummy  in  a  glass  case.  It  stands  for  ever  facing  the 
same  eternal  hills,  the  same  ever-flowing  river,  rising  into 
the  same  azure  or  lowering  sky  into  which  it  rose  at  first 


442  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

in  joy  or  pride.  It  may  be  as  old  as  the  Pyramids,  or  as 
recent  as  Queen  Anne.  But  in  any  case  it  has  watched 
generation  after  generation  come  and  go ;  for  thousands 
of  years  men  have  passed  under  that  portal ;  for  centuries 
the  bell  has  tolled  from  that  tower.  The  steps  of  this 
colonnade  have  been  worn  by  the  feet  of  Pericles,  Sopho- 
cles, Plato,  and  Socrates ;  under  this  arch  passed  the  An- 
tonines,  Trajan,  and  Charlemagne ;  Saint  Louis  used  to 
pray  standing  on  this  very  floor,  six  centuries  and  a  half 
ago ;  this  chapter-house  was  for  two  centuries  the  cradle 
of  the  Mother  of  Parliaments  throughout  the  world. 

No  other  art  whatever,  with  the  partial  exception  of 
large  frescoes,1  neither  music  nor  poetry,  has  this  religio 
loci,  this  consecration  of  some  spot  by  hallowed  associa- 
tion, which  is  bound  up  with  the  very  life  of  every  great 
building.  In  the  whole  range  of  art  there  is  nothing  so 
human,  so  social,  so  intense,  as  this  spirit  which  has  made 
the  practice  of  pilgrimage  an  eternal  instinct  of  humanity. 
To  pass  from  the  roar  of  Paris  or  London  to  sit  beside  the 
Venus  or  the  Theseus  is  delight.  We  all  feel  rest  and 
awe  before  a  Madonna  of  Raphael,  a  portrait  of  Titian,  or 
listening  to  Mozart's  'Requiem,'  or  to  '  Paradise  Lost.' 
But  to  me,  a  son  of  earth,  no  art  comes  home,  seeming  at 
once  so  intense  and  so  infinite,  as  when  I  wander  round 
the  old  piazzas  at  Florence  and  Venice,  or  pace  about 
the  Forum  or  the  Abbey.  There  art,  memory,  veneration, 
patriotism,  the  pathos,  the  endurance,  the  majesty  of 
humanity,  seem  to  me  to  blend  in  one  overpowering  sen- 
sation. Who  can  say  where  Art  ends  and  Veneration 
begins  ? 

Thus  every  ancient  building,  whether  it  be  a  successful 

1  Such  frescoes  as  those  of  the  Arena  Chapel  at  Padua,  or  the  Sistine  Chapel 
at  Rome,  belong  to  architecture  as  much  as  to  painting,  almost  as  much  as 
the  frieze  of  the  Parthenon  is  a  part  of  the  building. 


THE    SACREDNESS    OF    ANCIENT    BUILDINGS.  443 

work  of  art  or  not,  is  sacred  by  its  associations,  and  is  a 
standing  record  in  itself.  But  an  ancient  building  is  a 
far  more  definite  product  of  the  society  out  of  which  it 
grew  and  the  civilisation  which  created  it,  than  any  statue 
or  any  painting,  almost  more  than  any  music,  or  any  poem. 
It  is  usually  a  far  less  personal  and  individual  act  of 
imagination  than  statue,  painting,  poem,  or  music.  It  is 
a  collective  and  developing  work,  the  creation  of  a  series 
of  minds,  the  inspiration  of  a  given  epoch,  and  of  a  par- 
ticular people.  No  great  statue,  or  painting,  or  piece  of 
music,  or  poem,  was  ever  produced  by  a  group  of  artists. 
Most  great  buildings  were.  The  Parthenon  is  in  what  is 
called  the  Doric  not  the  Ionic  style ;  and  we  think  of  Phei- 
dias,  the  sculptor,  rather  than  Ictinus,  the  architect,  as  the 
genius  who  created  it.  Hardly  a  single  great  church,  till 
the  age  of  Wren,  can  be  positively  assigned  to  one  sole 
author,  as  we  assign  the  '  Agamemnon '  positively  to 
^schylus,  or  the  Sistine  Madonna  to  the  stessa  mano  of 
Raphael.  A  few,  a  very  few,  buildings  bear  the  stamp  of 
one  unique  genius,  such  as  the  Campanile  at  Florence,  the 
Sainte  Chapelle,  and  our  St.  Paul's.  Statues,  paintings, 
poems,  and  music  are  each  the  complete  conception  of 
one  mind,  the  execution  of  one  hand.  As  a  rule,  buildings 
are  the  accumulating  conception  of  several  minds,  the 
execution  of  successive  generations. 

It  is  no  doubt  this  character  in  buildings  which  has 
made  us  slow  to  treat  them  with  the  reverence  and  love 
that  we  show  so  readily  to  works  in  the  other  arts.  Other 
works  are  the  creations  of  some  master  whose  name,  story, 
and  individuality  we  know.  A  Madonna  is  by  Raphael  or 
Bellini ;  a  poem  is  by  Dante  or  Milton ;  a  Mass  is  by  Bach 
or  Mozart  ;  a  statue  is  by  Pheidias  or  Michael  Angelo. 
And  we  cannot  conceive  any  other  hand  or  brain  so  much 
as  touching  the  work.  But  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Wis- 


444  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

dom  at  Constantinople  is  the  work  of  the  Byzantine 
School ;  the  Cathedral  of  Chartres  is  the  work  of  builders 
in  the  Middle  Ages;  the  Abbey,  the  Tower  of  London, 
the  Louvre,  the  Duomo  and  the  Palazzo  Vecchio  at  Flor- 
ence, represent  whole  centuries  of  successive  evolution  in 
art  and  manners.  Statues  and  paintings  are  the  creations 
of  single  Masters.  Buildings  are  the  collective  growth  of 
Ages. 

But  for  this  very  reason,  what  buildings  lose  in  personal 
interest  they  gain  in  human  interest,  in  social  significance, 
in  historical  value.  The  multiplicity  of  parts  in  a  great 
edifice,  the  vast  range  of  its  power  over  an  infinite  series 
of  human  souls,  the  sacrifices,  the  endurance,  the  concen- 
tration of  efforts  by  which  it  was  built  up,  and  the  count- 
less generations  of  men  who  have  contributed  to  its 
beauty  or  have  been  touched  by  its  majesty,  give  it  a 
collective  human  glory,  which  no  statue  or  picture  ever 
had — a  glory  which  is  exceeded  only  by  the  great  poems 
of  the  world.  A  Madonna  was  struck  off  in  a  few  months, 
and  since  it  was  put  on  canvas  has  been  seen  by  some  tens 
of  thousands,  of  whom  some  thousand  came  from  it  better 
men.  A  statue,  a  song,  a  lyric,  appeals  to  a  definite  num- 
ber in  a  definite  way,  but  hardly  to  a  whole  people  on  every 
side  of  their  souls.  But  take  a  great  building  —  a  great 
group  of  buildings  at  its  highest  point — say  the  Acropolis 
at  Athens,  the  Forum  at  old  Rome,  the  Papal  edifices 
at  modern  Rome,  the  Piazzas  at  Florence,  Venice,  and 
Verona,  Notre  Dame  as  it  stood  unrestored,  our  own  great 
group  at  Westminster  —  in  vast  range  of  impression  and 
invention  they  are  certainly  surpassed  by  the  Bible,  the 
Iliad,  the  Divine  Comedy,  or  the  works  of  Shakespeare, 
but  by  no  other  creative  work  of  man  ever  produced.  The 
civilisation  of  whole  races  is  petrified  into  them.  For 
centuries,  tens  of  thousands  of  men  have  toiled,  thought, 


THE    SACREDNESS    OF    ANCIENT    BUILDINGS.  445 

imagined,  and  poured  their  souls  into  the  work.  It  would 
be  an  education  in  art  to  have  known  by  heart  that 
glorious  facade  of  Notre  Dame,  as  it  once  was,  when  every 
leaf  in  its  foliage,  every  fold  in  the  drapery,  every  smile  in 
every  saint's  face  was  an  individual  conception  of  some 
graceful  spirit  and  some  deft  hand  —  to  have  known  every 
legend  which  blazed  in  ruby,  azure,  and  emerald  in  the 
countless  lights  of  nave,  choir,  aisle,  and  transept,  the 
thousands  of  statues  which  peopled  it  within  and  without, 
the  carved  stalls  and  screens,  the  iron,  brass,  and  silver 
and  gold  work,  the  pictures,  the  frescoes,  the  tombs,  the 
altars,  the  marbles,  the  bronzes,  the  embroideries,  the 
ivories,  the  mosaics.  A  great  national  building  is  the  prod- 
uct of  a  nation,  and  is  the  school  of  a  nation.  And  for 
this  reason  it  should  stand  in  our  reverence  and  love  next 
to  the  great  poems  of  a  nation.  Next  to  the  Iliad  and  the 
Trilogy  comes  the  Parthenon.  Next  to  the  Divine  Comedy 
the  Duomo  of  Florence  and  its  adjuncts.  Next  to  Shakes- 
peare and  Milton  the  Abbey. 

There  is  thus  a  peculiar  quality  in  the  great  historic 
building  which  marks  it  off  from  all  other  works  of  art. 
It  is  in  a  special  sense  a  living  work.  It  is  not  so  much 
a  work  as  a  being.  It  has  an  organic  life,  organic  growth  ; 
it  has  a  history,  an  evolution  of  its  own.  The  Pantheon 
at  Rome  has  gone  on  living  and  growing  for  nearly  nine- 
teen centuries,  the  Castle  of  St.  Angelo  for  nearly  seven- 
teen, the  Church  of  the  Holy  Wisdom  for  thirteen,  and 
our  own  Tower  for  eight  centuries  ;  and  all  of  them  are 
still  living  buildings,  and  not  at  all  ruins  or  '  monuments.' 
A  building  may  undergo  amazing  permutations,  like  Ha- 
drian's Mausoleum,  the  baths  of  Diocletian,  or  the  Church 
of  Justinian,  and  yet  retain  its  identity  and  its  vital  energy. 
A  building  is  indeed  rather  an  institution  than  a  work; 
and,  like  all  institutions,  it  has  its  own  evolution,  corre- 


446  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

spending  with  the  social  evolution  on  which  it  depends, 
and  of  which  it  is  the  symbol.  Our  Tower,  Abbey,  Palace 
of  Westminster,  and  Windsor  Castle  are  much  more  like 
our  Monarchy,  Parliament,  and  Judicial  system  than  they 
are  like  a  Madonna  by  Raphael,  or  a  statue  by  Pheidias. 
They  are  not  objects  to  be  looked  at  in  museums.  They 
are  organic  lives,  social  institutions,  historic  forces. 

Now  I  hold  that  all  national,  historic,  monumental 
buildings  whatever,  however  small  or  humble,  partake  of 
this  character,  and  ought  to  have  the  same  veneration  and 
sacredness  bestowed  on  them.  Every  building  that  has  a 
definite  public  history,  and  has  been  dedicated  to  public 
use,  be  it  church,  tower,  bridge,  gateway,  hall,  is  a  national 
institution,  is  a  public  possession,  and  has  become  sacro- 
sanct, as  the  Romans  said.  In  the  law  of  Rome,  the 
ground  in  which  one  who  had  the  right  buried  a  dead 
body  became  ipso  facto,  religious ;  it  ceased  to  be  private 
property,  it  could  not  be  bought  or  sold,  transferred  or 
used.  It  was  for  ever  dedicated  to  the  dead,  and  reserved 
from  all  Current  usage.  So  a  building,  which  our  dead  fore- 
fathers have  dedicated  to  the  service  of  generations,  should 
be  sacrosanct  to  the  memory  of  the  Past. 

Its  size,  its  beauty,  its  antiquity,  its  celebrity,  are  matters 
of  degree  not  of  principle.  Essentially  it  is  a  national  pos- 
session, an  irreparable  monument,  a  sacred  record,  as  the 
great  Charter  and  '  Domesday  '  are.  These  records  have 
become  so  pitiably  few,  their  possible  value  is  so  incalcu- 
lably great,  their  unique,  inimitable,  priceless  nature  as 
relics  is  so  obvious,  that  wantonly  to  destroy  one  of  them 
ought  to  be  treated  as  a  public  crime,  like  smashing  the 
Portland  Vase,  or  defacing  the  Charter  and  '  Domesday.' 
It  is  preposterous  that  an  incumbent  and  his  church- 
wardens, a  dean  and  chapter,  a  mayor  and  aldermen,  a 
warden  and  benchers,  a  highway  board,  or  a  borough  cor- 


THE    SACREDNESS    OF    ANCIENT    BUILDINGS. 

poration,  should  be  free  to  deface  a  national  relic,  and 
falsify  a  national  record.  At  the  very  least,  a  parish  church 
should  be  as  well  protected  by  law  as  a  parish  register 
is  against  wanton  defacement  and  falsification  of  its  con- 
tents. In  principle  the  idea  is  admitted  by  the  need  for  a 
'  faculty.'  But  a  '  faculty  '  is  become  a  melancholy  form  ; 
and  no  '  faculty '  is  needed  by  the  trustees  who  sell  an 
ancient  edifice  to  a  builder's  speculation,  by  the  highway 
board  which  carts  away  a  tower  or  a  gate,  or  '  restores  '  and 
'  improves  '  a  bridge. 

Our  glorious  Milton  said,  in  a  passage  as  immortal  as 
his  poems,  'as  good  almost  kill  a  Man  as  kill  a  good  Book.' 
We  may  add :  '  As  good  almost  kill  a  good  Book  as  kill 
an  ancient  Building.'  The  one  is  as  irrecoverable  as  the 
other ;  it  may  teach  us  as  much ;  it  should  affect  us  even 
more.  See  how  the  words  of  that  most  Biblical  of  pas- 
sages, which  Isaiah  himself  might  have  uttered,  apply  to 
the  building  as  much  as  to  the  book.  Is  not  a  great  his- 
toric abbey  'an  immortality  rather  than  a  life'?  Is  not 
the  cathedral,  too,  'the  precious  life-blood  of  a  master- 
spirit, embalmed  and  treasured  up  on  purpose  to  a  life 
beyond  life  '  ?  Are  not  these  '  restorers  '  and  '  improvers  ' 
of  our  public  monuments  the  men  who  'spill  that  seasoned 
life  of  man  preserved  and  stored  up  in '  the  buildings 
which  our  forefathers  raised,  in  which  their  lives  were 
recorded,  and  their  best  work  was  bestowed  ? 

Every  work  of  art  has  in  it  'the  precious  life-blood  of  a 
master-spirit  ;  '  but  a  work  of  great  architecture  and  his- 
toric importance  has  in  it  the  precious  life-blood  of  many 
a  master-spirit.  And  the  humblest  ancient  monument, 
though  it  be  a  petty  parish  church  or  a  market  cross,  has 
this  '  seasoned  life  of  man  preserved  in  it.'  Like  the  pict- 
ure, the  statue,  the  poem,  in  every  work  of  art,  the  pre- 
cious life-blood  of  the  master-spirit  which  informs  it  should 


448  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

make  it  sacred  from  sacrilegious  hands.  But  the  building 
has  also  that  which  picture,  statue,  and  poem  have  not  — 
the  religio  loci.  '  The  place  whereon  thou  standest  is  holy 
ground,'  may  be  said  of  every  historic  monument.  Nay 
more.  The  ancient  building  is  marked  by  a  filiation  of 
master-spirits.  Like  the  Saxon  'Chronicle,'  or  the  'Annals 
of  Waverley,'  it  is  not  a  fixed  but  a  current  record.  It  is 
a  continuous  and  moving  monument — at  once  contempo- 
rary like  annals,  and  yet  organic  like  a  history.  The  great 
Charter,  '  Domesday,'  the  Bayeux  tapestry,  are  records  of 
given  moments  in  the  national  life.  But  in  the  Abbey  and 
its  precincts  may  be  seen  the  works  of  English  hands,  con- 
tinuously for  a  thousand  years,  generation  after  generation, 
typical  contemporary  work.  Now,  the  humblest  old  parish 
church  partakes  of  this  quality  of  continuous  typical  work 
for  centuries. 

It  is  monstrous  that  any  man,  any  body  of  men,  even 
any  single  generation,  should  claim  the  right  in  the  name 
of  property,  or  their  office,  or  their  present  convenience,  to 
destroy  in  a  moment  the  continuous  work  of  centuries,  to 
desecrate  the  best  work  of  their  forefathers,  and  to  rob 
their  own  descendants  of  their  common  birthright.  Who 
gave  this  rare  and  inimitable  value  to  the  ancient  building? 
Not  they,  nor  even  the  first  founders  of  it.  Generation 
after  generation  stamped  their  mark  on  it,  recorded  their 
thoughts  in  it,  poured  into  it  their  precious  life-blood.  It 
is  an  aggregate  product  of  their  race,  a  social  possession 
of  all.  Whence  came  the  religio  loci  which  casts  a  halo 
over  it  ?  From  no  single  author,  from  no  set  of  builders  : 
from  a  long  succession  of  ancestral  generations  to  whom 
it  has  grown  a  sacred  and  national  symbol.  That  precious 
value  which  time,  society,  the  nation,  have  given  it,  is  now 
at  the  mercy  of  any  man,  or  any  board. 

There  was  a  noble  doctrine  in  the  old   Roman   Law, 


THE    SACREDNESS    OF    ANCIENT    BUILDINGS.  449 

which  may  be  stated  in  the  words  of  Gaius  :  Sanctae 
quoque  res,  velut  muri  et  portae,  quodammodo  divini  iuris 
sunt.  Quod  autem  divini  iuris  est,  id  nullius  in  bonis  est. 
'  Things  like  city  walls,  city  gates,  are  sacrosanct ;  and,  in 
a  sense,  under  divine  sanction.  But  whatever  is  under 
the  divine  sanction  cannot  be  the  subject  of  property.' 
That  is  to  say,  historic  buildings  which  form  part  of  the 
national  records  are  consecrated  by  the  past  and  dedicated 
to  the  future,  and  are  taken  out  of  the  arbitrary  disposal 
of  the  present.  This  principle  goes  deeper  than  the  mak- 
ing them  public  property.  They  are  not  property  at  all  — • 
not  to  be  used,  consumed,  and  adapted  at  the  passing  will 
of  the  day.  They  are  not  the  chattels  of  the/w£/zV.  They 
are  not  public  property ;  they  are  consecrated  to  the  nation. 
Each  generation  is  too  apt  to  ask,  like  a  famous  peer, 
'  May  I  not  do  what  I  please  with  mine  own  ? '  No  ! 
national  possessions  are  much  more  than  public  property. 
They  are  not  '  the  own  '  of  a  passing  body.  They  are  the 
inheritance  which  the  past  is  bequeathing  to  the  future, 
and  of  which  we  are  but  trustees.  We  have  no  absolute 
rights  over  them  at  all ;  we  have  only  the  duty  to  preserve 
them. 

So  great  is  the  difference  between  our  treatment  of  old 
pictures,  statues,  poems,  and  songs,  and  our  treatment  of 
old  buildings,  that  there  must  be  some  ground  for  our 
practice.  Certainly  there  is.  Architecture  is  an  art  essen- 
tially different  from  other  arts ;  and  buildings  are  not 
simple  works  of  art.  A  building  intended  to  shelter  and 
contain  men,  is,  like  clothing,  food,  and  firing,  a  necessity 
of  man's  material  existence,  and  not,  as  picture,  statue, 
poem,  and  song  are,  means  of  giving  grace  and  joy  to 
man's  life.  Hence  every  building  is  first  and  principally 
a  necessity  and  a  material  utility,  and  a  work  of  beauty 
afterwards  (if  it  ever  become  so  at  all).  The  most  restless 

2F 


45O  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

generation  does  not  '  restore  '  and  '  convert '  either  pict- 
ure, statue,  poem,  or  song,  as  if  it  were  an  old  gown  or  a 
piece  of  carpet,  simply  because  they  are  not  conveniences 
but  enjoyments.  A  generation  which  finds  an  old  build- 
ing inconvenient,  is  cruelly  tempted  to  'convert,'  'adapt,' 
extend,  or  alter  it.  Again,  the  building  not  only  occupies 
a  surface  of  ground  enormously  greater  than  picture,  statue, 
or  book,  but  it  occupies  immovably  for  ever  one  definite 
spot  on  the  planet ;  and  in  the  perpetual  changes  of  social 
life  that  may  easily  become  an  intolerable  burden  on  the 
living.  As  the  building  occupies  unalterably  a  given  spot 
which  is  sometimes  a  primary  necessity  for  active  life,  the 
alternative  not  seldom  presents  itself  of  adaptation  or  de- 
struction. Thirdly  :  whilst  picture,  statue,  or  book  can  be 
preserved  almost  indefinitely  by  moderate  care,  the  build- 
ing requires  incessant  work,  sometimes  partial  renewal  of 
its  substance,  at  times  elaborate  constructive  repair  to  pre- 
vent it  from  actually  tumbling  down. 

There  are  thus  a  set  of  grounds,  some  on  one  side  some 
on  the  other,  which  mark  off  the  building  from  all  other 
works  of  art.  There  are  three  main  grounds  which  tempt 
the  living —  compel  the  living  —  to  deal  with  it  from  time 
to  time. 

First,  it  is  primarily  a  material  utility,  and  only  second- 
arily a  work  of  art. 

Next,  it  occupies  a  very  large  and  unalterable  spot. 

Lastly,  it  requires  constant  labour  to  uphold  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  three  main  grounds  which 
make  the  ancient  building  more  sacred  than  any  other 
work  of  man's  art. 

First,  it  alone  has  the  true  religio  loci. 

Secondly,  it  is  a  national  creation,  a  social  work  of  art, 
in  the  supreme  sense. 

Thirdly,  it  is  a  national  record,  in  a  way  that  no  other 


THE    SACREDNESS    OF    ANCIENT    BUILDINGS.  451 

work  of  art  is,  because  it  is  almost  always  both  a  collective 
and  a  continuous  record. 

Now  the  action  and  reaction  of  these  two  competing 
sets  of  impulses  undoubtedly  makes  the  protection  of  our 
ancient  buildings  a  very  complex  and  very  difficult  prob- 
lem. Both  sets  are  very  powerful,  both  act  in  varying 
degrees,  and  the  final  compromise  between  the  rival  sets 
of  claims  is  necessarily  the  work  of  much  anxious  discrimi- 
nation. I  venture  to  maintain  that  the  complication  and 
antagonism  is  such  that  no  hard-and-fast  doctrine  can  be 
laid  down.  Each  case  must  stand  on  its  merits.  Each 
decision  must  be  the  laborious  reconcilement  of  conflict- 
ing interests.  Our  cause  has  suffered  from  over-arbitrary 
dogmas  and  some  affectation  of  contempt  for  the  plain 
necessities  of  material  existence.  Every  one  outside  the 
Tuileries  laughed  at  Edmond  About,  when  he  told  the 
Romans  of  to-day  that  the  only  thing  left  for  them  was  '  to 
contemplate  their  ruins.'  I  wish  myself  that  they  had 
contemplated  their  ruins  a  little  longer,  or  had  allowed  us 
to  contemplate  them,  instead  of  seeking  to  turn  Rome  into 
a  third-rate  Paris.  But  we  shall  be  laughed  at  if  we  ever 
venture  to  tell  the  nineteenth  century  that  it  must  con- 
template its  ruins. 

The  trust  imposed  on  the  century  is  not  to  contemplate 
its  ruins,  but  to  protect  its  ancient  buildings.  Now  that 
will  be  done  if  the  century  can  learn  to  feel  the  true 
sacredness  of  ancient  buildings,  if  it  will  admit  that  the 
building  stands  on  the  same  footing  with  picture,  statue, 
and  poem,  that  it  is  unique,  inimitable,  irreplaceable  ;  and, 
above  all,  has  its  own  consecration  of  place,  continuity, 
and  record.  Admit  this  first,  and  then  we  will  consider 
the  claims  of  the  present,  their  convenience,  and  their 
means.  But  the  burden  of  proof  ought  always  to  be 
pressed  imperiously  against  those  whose  claim  is  to  de- 


452  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

stroy,  to  convert,  or  to  extend.  When  every  other  means 
fail,  when  irresistible  necessity  is  proved,  it  may  be  a  sad 
duty  to  remove  an  ancient  building,  to  add  to  it,  or  to 
incorporate  it.  But  this  can  never  justify  what  we  now 
call  '  restoring,'  a  process  which  makes  it  as  much  like  the 
original  as  Madame  Tussaud's  figures  are  like  th-e  states- 
man or  general  they  represent.  It  can  never  justify  re-dec- 
oration —  cutting  out  ancient  art-work  and  replacing  it  by 
new  work  or  machine  work.  It  can  never  justify  archaeo- 
logical exercises  —  I  mean  the  patching  on  to  old  buildings 
new  pieces  of  our  own  invention,  which  we  deliberately 
present  as  fabrications  of  the  antique.  These  things  are 
mere  Wardour  Street  spurious  bric-a-brac,  no  more  like 
ancient  buildings  than  a  schoolboy's  iambics  are  like 
^£schylus.  How  often  do  committees,  dean  and  chapter, 
public  offices,  and  even  Parliament  itself,  treat  our  great 
national  possessions  as  if  they  were  mere  copy  books,  on 
the  face  of  which  our  modern  architects  were  free  to 
practise  the  art  of  composing  imitations  of  the  ancients. 
Such  buildings  become  much  like  a  Palimpsest  manu- 
script ;  whereon,  over  a  lost  tragedy  of  Sophocles,  some 
wretched  monk  has  scribbled  his  barbarous  prose.  How 
often  is  the  priceless  original  for  ever  lost  beneath  the 
later  stuff ! 

In  these  remarks  I  have  strictly  confined  myself  to  gen- 
eral principles  :  first,  because  I  do  not  pretend  to  any 
special  or  technical  knowledge  which  would  entitle  me  to 
criticise  particular  works,  but  mainly  because  I  believe  our 
true  part  to  be  the  maintenance  of  general  principles.  If 
we  fall  into  discussions  of  detail  we  may  lose  hold  of  our 
main  strength.  We  have  to  raise  the  discussion  into  a 
higher  atmosphere  than  that  of  architectural  anachronism. 
We  cannot  pitch  our  tone  too  high.  It  is  not  architectural 
anachronism  which  we  have  to  check  :  it  is  the  safety  of 


THE    SACREDNESS    OF    ANCIENT    BUILDINGS.  453 

our  national  records,  our  national  self-respect,  the  spirit 
of  religious  reverence  that  we  have  to  uphold.  We  have 
to  do  battle  against  forgery,  irreverence,  and  desecration. 
Let  us  raise  a  voice  against  the  idea  that  any  work  of  art 
can  ever,  under  any  circumstances,  be  really  '  restored ; ' 
against  the  idea  that  any  ancient  art-work  can  usefully  be 
'imitated,'  against  the  idea  that  ancient  monuments  are 
a  corpus  vile  whereon  to  practise  antiquarian  exercises ; 
against  the  habit  of  forging  spurious  monuments,  as  the 
monks  in  the  Middle  Ages  forged  spurious  charters ;  finally, 
against  the  idea  that  the  convenience  of  to-day  is  always  to 
outweigh  the  sacredness  of  the  past. 

Strangely  enough,  the  foes  of  ancient  buildings  are  too 
often  those  of  their  own  household.  Amongst  the  worst 
sinners  of  all  are  the  public  departments,  corporations, 
and  the  clergy.  The  forgers,  the  destroyers,  the  muti- 
lators,  are  too  often  the  official  guardians  of  our  old  monu- 
ments. One  can  see  why.  They  are  the  people  who  use 
them,  to  whom  they  are  a  necessity  and  a  convenience. 
Naturally  they  are  constantly  tempted  to  give  them  greater 
practical  usefulness,  to  convert  them  to  modern  require- 
ments, and,  above  all,  to  make  them  look  smart.  We,  of 
the  public,  gaze  at  an  old  monument,  and  then  we  go  home. 
We  laymen  enjoy  an  old  thirteenth-century  church  just  as 
it  is  ;  but  to  the  official,  to  the  priest,  the  old  hall  or  the 
old  church  is  the  place  where  his  official  work  is  done. 
And  a  dreadful  temptation  besets  them  both  to  make  the 
seat  of  official  work  adequate  for  its  office,  and  appear  to 
be  up  to  the  level  of  our  time.  A  natural  sentiment ;  but 
one  false  and  dangerous.  Let  us  resist  it  in  the  name  of 
the  nation,  of  the  past  and  of  the  future.  These  things 
are  sacred  by  what  they  have  seen  and  known,  by  what 
they  teach,  by  what  they  record.  The  true  solution  is 
this.  If  the  present  age  needs  new  public  offices,  bigger 


454  THE    CITY    IN    HISTORY. 

churches,  new  halls,  bridges,  gates,  let  them  build  new 
ones.  If  it  needs  to  exercise  itself  in  architectural  Latin 
verses,  let  it  do  it  with  new  bricks,  new  stones,  and  on  a 
site  of  its  own  choosing. 

I  am  very  far  from  thinking  that  this  needs  Acts  of 
Parliament  ;  but  the  sacredness  of  ancient  buildings  can 
be  guaranteed  by  law.  Pictures,  statues,  poems,  are  now 
safe  from  modern  Vandals  by  the  force  of  public  opinion 
and  true  feeling  for  art  and  antiquity.  The  owner  of  a 
Raphael  or  a  Titian,  of  a  Greek  statue,  does  not  need  to 
be  restrained  by  an  Act  of  Parliament  or  an  injunction  in 
Equity  against  the  temptation  to  paint  over  his  picture, 
or  to  add  new  limbs  to  his  marble.  We  never  hear  the 
owner  of  some  princely  gallery  say  to  his  friends  :  '  You 
remember  what  a  dingy  thing  my  Veronese  used  to  be, 
how  poor  in  colour  my  Madonna  was,  and  what  a  stick  the 
Venus  looked,  with  one  arm  and  no  nose.  Well !  I  had 
Rubemup,  R.A.,  down  from  the  Academy,  and  you  see  the 
Veronese  is  as  bright  as  an  Etty ;  my  Raphael  might  go 
into  a  new  altar  at  the  Oratory,  and  the  Venus  is  fit  for  the 
Exhibition  ! '  We  never  hear  this  ;  but  we  do  hear  a  dean 
or  a  rector  take  a  party  over  the  '  restored '  cathedral  and 
church,  and  point  out  how  the  whole  of  the  stone-work 
has  been  refaced,  how  new  tracery  has  been  added  '  from 
Scott's  designs,'  and  how  the  Jacobean  wood-carving  has 
been  carted  away  to  Wardour  Street.  And  now  the  old 
church  looks  like  a  new  chapel-of-ease  at  a  fashionable  sea- 
side place.  And  the  Bishop  comes  down  in  lawn  and 
blesses  the  restored  and  re-consecrated  building,  and  the 
rector  gives  a  garden  party,  and  the  county  paper  brags 
about  the  liberal  subscription  lists.  What  we  have  to  do,  is 
to  make  them  all  understand  that  the  whole  business  is 
profanation,  ignorance,  and  vulgarity. 

Ancient  buildings   certainly  cannot  be  treated  as  'ex- 


THE    SACREDNESS    OF    ANCIENT    BUILDINGS.  455 

hibits,'  to  be  cased  in  glass,  and  displayed  in  a  museum. 
All  their  powers,  their  vitality  and  solemnity  would  dis- 
appear. They  have  in  most  cases  to  be  kept  fit  for  use ; 
and  in  some  rare  cases  they  may  have  to  be  completed, 
where  the  kind  of  work  they  need  is  within  our  modern 
resources.  As  to  Palladian  work  that  may  possibly  be 
attempted ;  but  as  to  true  mediaeval  work  of  the  best 
periods,  it  is  absolutely  impossible.  No  fine  carving  of 
this  age  can  be  remotely  reproduced  or  imitated  by  us 
now  in  feeling  and  manner.  The  current  of  gradual 
growth  for  the  best  mediaeval  work  has  been  broken  for 
centuries.  And  we  cannot  now  recover  the  tradition. 
The  archaic  naive  grace  of  a  thirteenth-century  relief, 
the  delicate  spring  of  foliage  round  capital  or  spandrel, 
are  utterly  irrecoverable.  There  does  not  exist  the  hand 
or  the  eye  which  can  do  it.  To  cut  out  old  art-work 
wholesale,  and  insert  new  machine  carving,  is  exactly  like 
cutting  out  a  Madonna  in  an  altar-piece,  or  inserting  a 
new  head  on  to  a  Greek  torso.  What  we  have  to  do  is 
to  uphold  the  fabric  as  best  we  may,  and  preserve  the 
decoration  as  long  as  we  can. 

There  is  need  to  educate  the  public,  especially  the  offi- 
cial public,  and  above  all  the  clergy,  to  understand  all  that 
is  meant  by  the  sacredness  of  ancient  buildings.  The 
business  is  not  so  much  to  discuss  solecisms  in  style  and 
blunders  in  chronology,  as  to  make  men  feel  that  our  na- 
tional monuments  are  dedicated  by  the  past  to  the  nation 
for  ever,  and  that  each  generation  but  holds  them  as  a 
sacred  trust  for  the  future. 


CHAPTER   XVII. 

PALjEOGRAPHIC    PURISM.1 

IN  this  age  of  historical  research  and  archaic  realism 
there  is  growing  up  a  custom  which,  trivial  and  plausible 
in  its  beginnings,  may  become  a  nuisance  and  a  scandal 
to  literature.  It  is  the  custom  of  re-writing  our  old 
familiar  proper  names;  of  re-naming  places  and  persons 
which  are  household  words :  heirlooms  in  the  English 
language. 

At  first  sight  there  seems  something  to  be  said  for  the 
fashion  of  writing  historical  names  as  they  were  written 
or  spoken  by  contemporary  men.  To  the  thoughtless  it 
suggests  an  air  of  scholarship  and  superior  knowledge, 
gathered  at  first  hand  from  original  sources.  Regarded 
as  the  coat-armour  of  some  giant  of  historical  research, 
there  is  something  piquant  in  the  unfamiliar  writing  of 
familiar  names ;  and  it  is  even  pleasant  to  hear  a  great 
scholar  talk  of  the  mighty  heroes  as  if  he  remembered 
them  when  a  boy,  and  had  often  seen  their  handwriting 
himself.  When  Mr.  Grote  chose  to  write  about  Kekrops, 
Y^rete,  Y^leopatra,  and  Pericles,  we  were  gratified  by  the 
peculiarity ;  and  we  only  wondered  why  he  retained  Cyrus, 
Centaur,  Cyprus,  and  TJnicydides.  And  when  Professor 
Freeman  taught  us  to  speak  of  '  Charles  the  Great,'  and 
the  Battle  of  Senlac,  we  all  feel  that  to  talk  of  Hastings 
would  be  behind  the  age. 

But,  in  these  days,  the  historical  schools  are  growing 

1  Nineteenth  Century,  Jan.  1886,  vol.  xix.  No.  107. 
45° 


PAL^OGRAPHIC    PURISM.  457 

in  numbers  and  range.  There  are  no  longer  merely  Attic 
enthusiasts,  and  Somersaetan  champions,  but  other  ages 
and  races  have  thrown  up  their  own  historiographers 
and  bards.  There  are  '  Middle-English  '  as  well  as  '  Old- 
English  '  votaries,  —  and  Eliza-ists,  and  Jacob-ists,  and 
Ann-ists.  Then  there  are  the  French,  the  German,  the 
Italian,  the  Norse  schools,  to  say  nothing  of  ^Egyptologists, 
Hebraists,  Sanscritists,  Accadians,  Hittites,  Moabites,  and 
Cuneiform-ists.  It  becomes  a  very  serious  question,  what 
will  be  the  end  of  the  English  language  if  all  of  these  are 
to  have  their  way,  and  are  to  re-baptize  the  most  familiar 
heroes  of  our  youth  and  to  re-spell  the  world-famous 
names. 

Each  specialist  is  full  of  his  own  era  and  subject,  and 
is  quite  willing  to  leave  the  rest  of  the  historical  field  to 
the  popular  style.  But  there  is  a  higher  tribunal  beyond  ; 
and  those  who  care  for  history  as  a  whole,  and  for  English 
literature  in  the  sum,  wonder  how  far  this  revival  in  orthog- 
raphy is  to  be  carried.  Let  us  remember  that,  both  in 
space  and  in  time,  there  is  a  vast  body  of  opinion  of  which 
account  must  be  taken.  There  is  the  long  succession  of 
ages,  there  is  the  cultivated  world  of  Europe  and  America, 
in  both  of  which  certain  names  have  become  traditional 
and  customary.  And  if  every  knot  of  students  is  to  re- 
name at  will  familiar  persons  and  historic  places,  historical 
tradition  and  the  custom  of  the  civilised  world  are  wan- 
tonly confused.  This  true  filiation  in  literary  history  is 
of  far  more  importance  than  any  alphabetic  precision. 

About  forty  years  ago,  Mr.  Grote  began  the  practice 
of  re-setting  the  old  Greek  names;  but  his  spelling  has 
not  commended  itself  to  the  world.  There  seems  much 
to  be  said  for  Themistoklcs  and  Kleon  ;  but  when  we  were 
asked  to  write  Korkyra  and  Krete,  we  felt  that  the  filiation 
of  Corcyra  and  Crete  with  Latin  and  the  modern  tongues 


THE    MEANING   OF    HISTORY. 

was  needlessly  disturbed.  Kirke,  Kilikia,  Perdikkas,  Ka~ 
tana,  seemed  rather  harsh  and  too  subversive.  And  if 
Sophokles  and  Sokrates  are  right,  why  ^Eschylus  and 
sEneas,  in  lieu  of  Aischulos  and  Aineiasf  Besides,  on 
what  ground  stop  short  at  a  k,  leaving  the  vowels  to  a 
Latin  corruption  ?  The  modern  Greeks  call  the  author 
of  the  Iliad — Omeros ;  and  the  victor  of  Marathon  — 
Mcelteeadthes ;  and  it  is  highly  probable  that  this  is  far 
nearer  the  true  pronunciation  than  are  our  Homer  and 
Miltiades.  To  be  consistent,  we  shall  have  to  talk  of  Aias, 
Odusseus,  Purrhos,  Lnkourgos,  Thoukudides,  Oidipous,  Ais- 
c/inlos,  and  Kirke,  wantonly  interrupting  the  whole  Greco- 
Roman  filiation.  And,  whilst  we  plunge  orthography  into 
a  hopeless  welter,  we  shall  stray  even  farther  from  the 
true  ancient  pronunciation.  In  the  result,  English  litera- 
ture has  rejected  the  change  with  an  instinctive  sense  that 
it  would  involve  us  in  quicksands ;  and  would  to  no  suffi- 
cient purpose  break  the  long  tradition  which  bound  Greece 
with  Rome,  and  both  with  European  literary  customs. 

Mr.  Carlyle  would  have  all  true  men  speak  of  FriedricJt 
and  Otto ;  of  the  Knrfurst  of  Kb'ln ;  of  Trier,  Prag,  Re- 
gensburg,  and  Schlesien.  But  then  he  is  quite  willing  to 
speak  like  any  common  person  about  Maliomet  and  the 
Koran,  of  Clovis  and  Lothar,  of  a  Duke  of  Brunswick,  and 
of  Charles  Amadeus  of  Savoy ;  he  Anglicises  Marseille, 
Preussen,  Oesterreich,  and  SacJiscn  ;  nay,  he  actually  talks 
about  '  Charlemagne  '  at  '  Aix-la-Chapelle.'  Tradition  and 
English  literature  are  in  fact  too  strong  for  him,  except 
where  he  wishes  to  be  particularly  affectionate  or  unusu- 
ally impressive.  I  venture  to  think  that  Frederick  and 
Cologne  are  names  so  deeply  embedded  in  our  English 
speech  that  there  is  nothing  affectionate  or  impressive  in 
the  effort  to  uproot  them  by  foreign  words  which  the  mass 
of  Englishmen  cannot  pronounce.  It  is  ridiculous  to  write, 


PALjEOGRAPHIC    PURISM.  459 

'  The  Kurfiirst  of  Koln?  It  should  be,  '  Der  Kurfiirst  von 
Koln'  But,  then,  we  had  better  write  in  German  at  once. 

Of  all  the  historical  schools,  that  of  the  Old  English 
has  been  the  most  revolutionary  in  its  methods,  and  the 
most  exacting  in  its  demands.  It  began  by  condemning 
'  Charlemagne  '  and  the  '  Anglo-Saxons  ' ;  and  now  to  use 
either  of  these  familiar  old  names  is  to  be  guilty  of  some- 
thing which  is  almost  a  vulgarism,  if  not  an  impertinence. 
We  have  all  learned  to  speak  of  Karl  and  the  Old  English. 
One  by  one,  the  familiar  names  of  English  history,  the 
names  that  recur  in  every  family,  were  recast  into  some- 
thing grotesque  in  look  and  often  very  hard  indeed  to 
pronounce.  Ecgberht,  Cnut,  or  Knud,  the  Hwiccas,  AZlftJi- 
ryth,  Hrofcsceaster,  and  Cant-wara-byryg  had  rather  a  queer 
look.  Chtotachar^  Chlodowig,  Hrotland,  were  not  pleasing. 
But  when  we  are  asked  to  give  up  Alfred,  Edward,  and 
Edgar,  and  to  speak  of  Alfred,  Eadiveard,  and  Eadgar, 
we  began  to  reflect  and  to  hark  back. 

Alfred,  Edward,  and  Edgar  are  names  which  for  a  thou- 
sand years  have  filled  English  homes,  and  English  poetry 
and  prose.  To  rewrite  those  names  is  to  break  the  tradi- 
tion of  history  and  literature  at  once.  It  is  no  doubt  true 
that  the  contemporaries  of  these  kings  before  the  conquest 
did,  when  writing  in  the  vernacular,  spell  their  names  with 
the  double  vowels  we  are  now  invited  to  restore.  But  is 
that  a  sufficient  reason  ?  We  are  not  talking  their  dialect, 
nor  do  we  use  their  spelling.  We  write  in  modern  Eng- 
lish, not  in  old  English  ;  the  places  they  knew,  the  titles 
they  held,  the  words  they  used,  have  to  be  modernised,  if 
we  wish  to  be  understood  ourselves.  We  cannot  preserve 
exactly  either  the  sounds  they  uttered,  or  the  phrases  they 
spoke,  or  the  names  of  places  and  offices  familiar  to  them. 
Why  then  need  we  be  curious  to  spell  their  names  as  their 
contemporaries  did,  when  we  have  altered  all  else  —  pro- 


460  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

nunciation,  orthography,  titles,  and  indeed  the  entire  outer 
form  of  the  language  ?  The  precision  for  which  we  vainly 
strive  in  the  spelling  of  names  is  after  all  a  makeshift,  very 
imperfectly  observed  by  any  one,  and  entirely  neglected  by 
others.  And  it  has  the  defect  of  ignoring  a  long  and  sug- 
gestive unity  in  history,  language,  and  common  civilisation. 

It  may  be  true  that  the  contemporaries  of  '  Edward  the 
Elder,'  '  Edward  the  Martyr,'  and  '  Edward  the  Confessor' 
spelt  the  name  Eadward,  or  Eadweard,  if  they  wrote  in 
English ;  though  they  did  not  uniformly  do  so  when  they 
wrote  it  in  Latin.  But  did  the  '  Edwards '  of  Plantagenet 
so  spell  their  name  ;  or  '  Edward  '  Tudor ;  and  will '  Edward 
the  Seventh '  so  spell  his  name  ?  And  is  Alfred,  a  name 
to  conjure  with  wherever  the  English  speech  is  heard,  to 
be  severed  from  the  great  king  ?  '  Alfred '  is  a  familiar 
name  just  as  '  king '  is  a  familiar  title  ;  and  it  is  as  pedantic 
to  insist  on  archaic  forms  of  the  name  as  it  would  be  to 
insist  on  the  Saxon  form  of  the  office.  Since  Edward  \w$> 
not  called  by  his  contemporaries  either  '  King '  or  '  The 
Elder,'  what  do  we  gain  by  such  a  hybrid  phrase  as  '  King 
Eadweard  the  Elder '  ? 

It  is  only  a  half-hearted  realism  which  writes  —  '  Ead- 
weardwas  now  King  of  all  England.'  It  should  run:  — 
'  Eadweard  was  now  Cyning  of  all  Engla-land?  It  is  quite 
correct  to  write  in  modern  English :  —  '  King  Edward 
marched  from  London  to  York.'  Here,  the  proper  names 
are  all  alike  adapted  to  our  vernacular.  It  is  an  anachro- 
nism, or  an  anarchaism,  to  write — '  King  Eadweard  marched 
from  London  to  York.'  It  ought  to  run,  if  we  are  bent  on 
writing  pure  old  English,  '  Eadweard  Cyning  marched  from 
Lundenbyiyg  \JQ  Eofonvic?  That  is  the  real  couleur  locale ; 
but  the  general  reader  could  hardly  stand  many  pages  of 
this.  It  is  not  true  in  fact  that  '  dEthelberht  lived  at  Can- 
terbury.' He  lived  at  '  Cant-wara-byryg?  Ethelbert,  how- 


PAL.EOGRAPHIC    PURISM.  461 

ever,  may  properly  be  said  to  have  lived  at  Canterbury. 
For  thirteen  centuries  Canterbury  and  York  have  been 
famous  centres  of  our  English  life.  Except  in  a  parenthe- 
sis, or  in  a  monograph,  it  would  be  a  nuisance  to  mention 
them  under  the  cumbrous  disguises  of  '  Eoforwic '  and 
'  Cant-wara-byryg' ;  and  for  precisely  the  same  reason  it  is 
a  nuisance  to  read,  Alfred,  Ecgberht,  and  Eadweard. 

Where  is  it  going  to  stop  ?  Ours  is  an  age  of  archaeol- 
ogy, revival,  and  research ;  and  in  no  field  is  research  more 
active  than  in  Biblical  and  other  Oriental  history.  The 
grand  familiar  names,  which  have  had  a  charm  for  us 
from  childhood,  which  have  kindled  the  veneration  of  a 
long  roll  of  centuries,  are  all  being  '  restored '  to  satisfy  an 
antiquarian  purism.  We  shall  soon  be  invited  to  call  Moses, 
Moshek,  as  his  contemporaries  did.  Judah  should  be  writ- 
ten Yehuda;  Jacob  will  be  Yaaqob.  Our  old  friend  Job 
will  appear,  clothed  and  in  his  right  mind,  as  lyob.  The 
prophet  Elijah  is  Eliyaku  ;  and  the  prophet  Isaiah  is  now 
metamorphosed  into  YesJiayaliu.  Imagine  how  our  de- 
scendants will  have  to  rewrite  the  lines :  — 

'  O  thou  my  voice  inspire, 
Who  touclvd  Yeshayahiis  hallow'd  lips  with  fire.' 

And  the  teacher  will  have  to  explain  to  our  grand- 
children that  '  Isaiah '  is  an  old  vulgarism  for  Ycshayahu. 
'Jerusalem  the  Golden '  will  appear  in  the  children's  hymns 
as  Yerushala'im;  and  when  we  speak  of  the  walls  of  Jericho 
we  must  sneeze,  and  say  J'recho.  We  must  say  —  the 
Proverbs  of  SJielomoh.  But  this  is  not  the  end  of  it.  The 
very  names  in  men's  prayers  and  devotions  must  be  re- 
formed. Catholics  must  learn  to  say  their  Aves  to  '  Ma- 
ridm ';  and  the  Protestant  must  meditate  on  the  '  Blood  of 
Jehoshua! 

The  historical  mind  will  so  have  it.     It  has  laid  down  a 


462  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

rigid  canon  that  .proper  names  should  be  spelt  in  the  form 
in  which  their  contemporaries  wrote  them.  And  if  Alfred, 
a  name  which  for  so  many  centuries  has  been  a  watchword 
to  the  English  race,  is  to  be  '  restored  '  into  ^Elfred,  because 
he  and  his  so  spoke  it  and  wrote  it;  by  the  same  rule  must 
we  speak  and  write  of  JeJiosJiua  of  Nazareth,  using  the 
same  letters  in  which  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  of  his  day 
recorded  the  name  in  official  Hebrew.  The  historical 
mind  has  said  it ;  and  English  literature,  custom,  the  ver- 
nacular speech,  poetry,  patriotism,  and  devotion  must  all 
give  way. 

The  historical  mind  has  an  almost  unlimited  field ;  and 
all  the  names  it  records  will  have  to  be  '  restored'  in  turn. 
When  Mosheh  led  forth  the  people  of  YeJiiida  to  the  prom- 
ised Yerushalaim,  he  really  led  them  out  of  Chemi  or  Kebt- 
hor,  not  out  of  'Egypt,'  which  is  a  Greek  corruption.  And 
Pi-Re  and  all  his  host  were  drowned  in  the  Ydm-SAph  ;  for 
of  course  Red  Sea  is  a  mere  translation  of  a  late  Hellenic 
term.  About  the  central  Asian  monarchies  we  fortunately 
have  an  imperishable  and  infallible  record  ;  for  the  great 
king  himself  inscribed  on  the  eternal  rock  the  names  of 
his  ancestors  and  his  contemporaries.  It  is  therefore  inex- 
cusable in  us  if  we  continue  to  write  the  names  of  Oriental 
sovereigns  in  the  clumsy  corruptions  of  ignorant  Greeks. 

All  history  contains  no  record  more  authentic  than  the 
sculptured  rock  of  Behistun,  whereon  the  names  of  the 
great  kings  stand  graven  in  characters  as  unalterable  as 
the  laws  of  the  Medes  and  the  Persians.  'Darius/  we 
used  to  write  in  our  ignorant  way,  '  became  King  of  Persia, 
Susiana,  Babylonia,  Assyria,  Arabia,  and  Egypt.'  Not  so 
was  it  said  by  them  of  old  time ;  not  Darius,  but  Ddraya- 
•vush  ;  not  king,  but  Khshdyathiya.  So,  then,  the  geography 
lessons  of  our  grandsons  will  run  :  —  '  Ddrayavush  was  the 
Khshdyathiya  of  Pdrsa,  of  '  Uvaja,  of  Bdbirus/t,  of  Athurd, 


P  ALLOGRAPH  1C    PURISM.  463 

of  Arabdya,  of  Mudrdya?  The  entire  orthography  of  the 
Median  and  Persian  Dynasties  is  now  complete  and  exact. 
It  was  not  'Cyrus'  who  founded  the  Persian  Empire,  as  we 
used  to  be  told :  it  was  Kuransh.  The  famous  king  who 
perished  in  the  desert  was  Kdbujiya,  the  son  of  Kuraush. 
And  both,  beside  their  own  ancestral  dominion  of  Pdrsa, 
ruled  over  the  mighty  world-famous  city  of  Bdbirum,  and 
the  country  which  lay  between  the  rivers  Tigrdm  and  Ufrd- 
tauvd.  Oriental  history  is  at  last  as  simple  as  an  infant's 
ABC. 

And  we  are  now  able  to  record  the  immortal  tale  of  the 
war  between  Hellas  and  Pdrsa  with  some  regard  for  ortho- 
graphic accuracy.  It  was  Khshaydrshd  who  mustered  the 
millions  of  Asia  in  the  great  struggle  which  ended  in  the 
glorious  battles  of  the  Hot  Gates  and  of  Psyttaleia.  His 
great  generals,  Ariyabkaja  and  Munduniya,  met  the  Hel- 
lenic hoplites  only  to  court  defeat ;  and  KhshaydrsJid,  the 
son  of  Ddryavush,  at  length  withdrew  from  a  land  which 
seemed  fatal  to  the  entire  race  of  Hakkdmanish,  and  sought 
rest  in  his  luxurious  palace  of  '  Uvaja.  So  will  run  the 
Hellenic  histories  of  the  future,  in  an  orthography  not 
quite  so  cacophonous  and  hieroglyphic  as  many  a  page  in 
the  Making  of  England. 

Oriental  literature  is  making  vast  strides,  and  the  authen- 
tic books  of  the  East  are  daily  brought  closer  and  clearer 
to  our  firesides.  And  under  the  influence  of  this  learning 
our  very  children  are  coming  to  be  familiar  with  the  new 
dress  of  the  old  names.  We  have  grown  out  of  'Ma- 
homet,' '  Moslem,'  '  Koran/  and  '  Hegira,'  and  we  are 
careful  to  write  Muhammad,  Muslim,  Quran,  and  Hejra. 
For  our  old  friend  Mahomet  and  his  Koran  various  pro- 
fessors contend.  Mohammed,  Muhammad,  Mahmoud,  and 
Mehemet  have  had  their  day ;  and  now  they  are  contend- 
ing whether  Qnrdn  or  Qordn  best  represents  the  exact 


464  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

cacophony  of  the  native  Arabic.  And  so  on  through  the 
whole  series  of  famous  Oriental  names  :  the  Zend-Avesta, 
or  Avesta,  the  UpanisJiads,  PCung  Foo-tsze,  Tsze-Kung,  and 
Tsze-Sze.  Scholars,  of  course,  have  to  tell  us  all  about 
the  Sukhdvati-  VyiiJia  and  the  Pragnd-Pdramitd-Hridaya- 
Sutra  ;  but  the  question  is,  if  the  rising  generation  will 
ever  be  familiarised  with  these  elaborate  names. 

It  may  be  doubted  if,  after  all,  the  exact  equivalent  of 
these  foreign  sounds  can  ever  be  presented  to  the  English 
reader  by  any  system  of  phonetic  spelling ;  all  the  more 
when  this  spelling  has  to  call  to  its  aid  an  elaborate  sys- 
tem of  circumflex,  diphthong,  comma,  italic,  breathing  Sh'va 
and  Daghesh,  most  alien  to  the  genius  of  our  language. 
Can  a  man,  unlearned  in  the  respective  tongues,  pronounce 
K'ung-Foo-tsze,  Kurfurst  of  Koln,  Quran,  with  any  real 
correctness  ?  And,  if  he  cannot,  is  it  worth  while  to  upset 
the  practice  of  Europe  for  centuries,  and  so  vast  a  concur- 
rence of  literature,  for  the  sake  of  a  phonetic  orthography 
which  is  almost  picture-writing  in  its  lavish  use  of  symbols  : 
and  all  in  pursuit  of  an  accuracy  which  can  never  be  con- 
sistently adopted  ?  It  may  look  very  learned,  but  is  it 
common  sense  ? 

It  so  happens  that  almost  all  of  the  Founders  of  Relig- 
ions in  the  East  are  known  to  us  by  certain  familiar  names, 
which  are  obviously  not  the  actual  names  they  bore  -in 
their  lifetime ;  but  which  for  centuries  have  passed  cur- 
rent in  the  literary  speech  of  Europe.  Confucius,  Mencius, 
BuddJia,  Zoroaster,  Mahomet,  Moses,  andfesus  are  popular 
adaptations  of  names  which  the  European  languages  could 
not  easily  assimilate.  As  such  those  names  are  embedded 
in  a  thousand  works  of  poetry,  history,  and  criticism,  and 
have  gathered  round  them  an  imposing  mass  of  interest 
and  tradition.  Is  it  not  almost  an  outrage  to  discard  these 
old  associations  and  to  re-baptize  these,  hoary  elders  with 


PAIJEOGRAPHIC    PURISM.  465 

the  newfangled  literalism  of  phonetic  pedantry  ?  Kung- 
Foo-tsse,  Mang-tsze,  Sdkyamouni,  or  SiddJidrtha,  Zarathus- 
tra  or  Zerdusht,  Muhammad,  MosJieJi,  and  Jehoshua,  may 
be  attempts  to  imitate  the  sounds  emitted  by  their  contem- 
poraries in  Asia,  but  they  are  an  offence  in  Europe  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  which  has  long  known  these  mighty 
teachers  under  names  that  association  has  hallowed  to  our 
ears.  If  scholarship  requires  us  to  sacrifice  these  old 
familiar  names,  the  necessity  applies  to  all  alike.  If  we 
are  henceforth  to  talk  of  the  Qur'dn  of  Muhammad,  we 
had  better  give  out  the  first  lesson  in  church  from  the 
ToratJi  of  the  law-giver  MosheJi. 

And,  of  course,  our  Roman  history  will  have  to  be 
'restored.'  'Romans,'  'Etruscans,'  '  Tarquin,'  ' Appins 
Claudius,'  and  the  rest  are  now  the  Ramnes,  the  Ras- 
cnn<z,  TarcJinaf,  and  Attus  Clauzus.  What  is  to  be  the 
final  issue  of  that  bottomless  pit  of  Roman  embryology, 
Dr.  Mommsen  only  knows.  All  that  we  now  behold  is 
a  weltering  gulf  of  Ramnes,  Titles,  Sabelli,  Ras,  Curites, 
where  archaic  and  ethnologic  fumes  roll  upwards  in- 
cessantly, as  from  an  unfathomable  crater.  Some  day 
we  shall  know  what  was  the  true,  unpronounced,  and 
undivulged  name  of  Rome ;  and  what  is  the  true  pho- 
netic equivalent  of  '  Romulus '  and  '  Numa,'  of  '  Tarquin ' 
and  'Brutus.'  We  are  even  now  in  a  position  to  speak 
with  accuracy  of  the  later  history.  When  they  come  to 
the  Punic  wars,  our  boys  and  girls  in  the  Board-schools 
of  the  twentieth  century  will  learn  to  say :  — '  The  great 
contest  now  begins  between  the  Ramnes  and  the  Chna-ites 
of  the  mighty  city  of  Kereth-Hadeslioth ;  "  An-nce-baal" 
the  son  of  "  Am-Melech-KirjatJi,"  proved  himself  the  great- 
est general  of  antiquity ;  but,  when  he  was  overwhelmed 
in  the  final  defeat  of  Naraggara,  the  city  of  Queen  Jedi- 
diaJi  fell  before  the  irresistible  valour  of  the  worshippers 

2G 


466  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

of  Diovispater*  And  when  the  young  scholars  get  down 
to  the  Kym-ry  and  the  GdltacJid,  the  Vergo-breiths,  Ver- 
kenn-kedo-righ,  Or-kedo-righ,  Cara-dawg,  and  Heer-filrst, 
may  mercy  keep  their  poor  little  souls  !  There  are  Gdl- 
tachd-ic,  and  Kym-ric,  and  Duitisch  enthusiasts,  as  well  as 
those  of  Wessex  and  Gwent.  I  understand  there  are  peo- 
ple even  now  who  want  us  to  call  Paris  —  Loukh-teith. 

A  very  large  proportion  of  famous  men  have  been 
known  in  history  and  commemorated  in  literature  under 
names  other  than  those  given  to  them  by  their  godfathers 
and  their  godmothers  in  their  baptism,  or  those  that  were 
entered  in  the  parish  register.  Under  those  names  we 
love  them,  think  of  them,  and  feel  akin  to  them.  Their 
names  are  household  words  :  a  part  of  European  literature, 
and  fill  us  with  kindly  and  filial  feelings.  These  good  old 
names  are  being  steadily  supplanted  by  the  alphabetic 
martinets  who  recall  us  to  the  register  with  all  the  formal- 
ism of  a  parish  clerk  or  a  Herald  from  the  College.  Not 
Mo  Here,  but  Poqnelin  ;  not  Voltaire,  \m\.Arouet ;  not  George 
Sand,  but  the  Baroness  Dudevant ;  not  Madame  de  Se"vigne", 
but  Marie  de  Rabutin-Cliantal.  It  will  soon  be  a  sign  of 
ignorance  to  speak  of  Tom  Jones  and  Becky  Sharp.  It 
will  be  Thomas  Summer,  Esq.,  Junior,  J.P.,  and  Mrs. 
Joseph  Sedley.  We  shall  soon  have  the  Essays  of  Vis- 
count St.  Albans,  and  the  Letters  of  the  Earl  of  Orford. 

Every  reader  is  familiar  with  the  consummate  perfec- 
tion of  the  Library  of  the  British  Museum,  the  glory  of 
British,  the  envy  of  foreign  scholars.  And  it  gives  one 
an  awful  sense  of  the  growth  of  this  form  of  purism  to 
watch  it  invading  our  noble  library.  Go  to  the  Catalogue 
and  turn  to  Voltaire,  and  you  will  read  '  Voltaire,  see 
Arouet ;'  and  you  will  have  to  trudge  to  the  other  end 
of  the  enormous  alphabet.  Why  Arouet  ?  What  has  his 
legal  name  to  do  with  a  writer  who  put  his  name,  Voltaire, 


PAL^OGRAPHIC    PURISM.  467 

on  the  title-page  of  thousands  of  editions,  and  never  on 
one,  Arouet?  And  Moliere? —  is  not  Moliere,  as  a  name, 
a  part  of  modern  literature  ?  Mr.  Andrew  Lang  tells  a 
most  delightful  story  of  a  printer,  who  found  in  his  '  copy ' 
some  reference  to  'the  Scapin  of  Poquelin.'  This  hope- 
lessly puzzled  him,  till  a  bright  idea  struck  his  inventive 
mind,  and  he  printed  it  — '  the  Scapin  of  M.  Coguelin.' 

Turn,  in  the  Reference  Catalogue  of  the  Museum,  to 
Madame  de  Sevigne",  and  we  read :  —  Se'vigne',  Marie  de 
Rabutin-Chantal,  Marchioness  de : —  see  Rabutin-Chantal' 
Why  should  we  'see'  Rabutin-CJiantal?  That  was  her 
maiden-name ;  and  since  she  married  at  eighteen,  and  her 
works  are  letters  to  her  daughter,  it  seems  a  little  odd  to 
dub  an  elderly  mamma  of  rank  by  her  maiden-name.  And 
what  in  the  name  of  precision  is  '  Marchioness  de  '  ?  It  is 
like  saying  '  Mister  Von  Goethe.'  Once  attempt  a  minute 
heraldic  accuracy,  and  endless  confusion  results.  Why 
need  '  Mrs.  Nicholls '  appear  in  the  catalogue  of  the  works 
of  Currer  Bell?  And  why  need  George  Eliot  be  entered 
as  Marian  Evans — a  name  which  the  great  novelist  did 
not  bear  either  in  literature  or  in  private  life? 

If  we  apply  the  baptismal-certificate  theory  strictly  to 
history,  universal  confusion  will  result.  Law  students  will 
have  to  study  the  Digest  of  Uprauda.  His  great  general 
will  be  Beli-Tzar.  And  by  the  same  rule,  the  heroic  Sala- 
din  becomes  Salah-cd-deen,  or  rather,  Malek-Nasser-You- 
sonf ;  Dante  becomes  Durante  Alighieri ;  Copernicus  is 
Kopernik ;  and  Columbus  becomes  Cristobal  Colon.  If 
baptismal  registers  are  decisive,  we  must  turn  '  Erasmus ' 
into  Gerhardt  Praet ;  '  Melanctlwn  '  into  Schwarzerd ;  and 
'  Scaliger '  into  Bordoni.  There  is  no  more  reason  to 
change  Alfred  into  ALlfred  and  Frederick  into  Friedrich 
than  there  would  be  to  transform  the  great  sailor  into 
Cristobal  Colon,  and  to  talk  about  the  Code  of  Uprauda. 


468  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

And  the  dear  old  painters,  almost  every  one  of  whom 
has  a  familiar  cognomen  which  has  made  the  tour  of  the 
civilised  world.  What  a  nuisance  it  is  to  read  in  galleries 
and  catalogues,  Vecellio,  Vannucci,  and  Cagliari,  in  lieu  of 
our  old  friends  Titian,  Perugino,  and  Veronese  !  Raphael 
and  Michael  Angelo,  Masaccio  and  Tintoretto  are  no  more  : 
'  restorers '  in  oil  are  renewing  for  us  the  original  brilliancy 
of  their  hues ;  whilst  '  restorers '  in  ink  are  erasing  the 
friendly  old  nick-names  with  vera  capias  of  the  baptismal 
certificates  in  their  hands.  Every  chit  of  an  aesthete  will 
talk  to  you'about  the  Cenacolo,  or  the  Sposalizio,  of  Sanzio  ; 
and  the  Paradiso  in  the  Palazzo  Ducale;  though  these 
words  are  nearly  the  limit  of  his  entire  Italian  vocabulary. 
This  new  polyglott  language  of  historians  and  artists  is 
becoming,  in  fact,  the  speech  which  is  known  to  the 
curious  as  maccaronic.  It  recalls  the  famous  lines  of  our 
youth  :  —  Trumpeter  unus  erat,  coatum  qui  scarlet  habebat. 

There  are  two  fatal  impediments  to  this  attempt  at 
reproducing  archaic  sounds.  It  is  at  best  but  a  clumsy 
symbolism  of  unpronounceable  vocables,  and  it  never  is, 
and  never  can  be,  consistently  applied.  sEthelthryth, 
Hrofesceaster,  and  Gruffydd  are  grotesque  agglomerations 
of  letters  to  represent  sounds  which  are  not  familiar  to 
English  ears  or  utterable  by  English  lips.  The  '  Old-Eng- 
lish '  school  pur  sang  do  not  hesitate  to  fill  whole  sentences 
of  what  is  meant  to  be  modern  and  popular  English  with 
these  choking  words.  Professor  Freeman  used  obsolete 
letters  in  an  English  sentence.  Now,  I  venture  to  say 
that  English  literature  requires  a  work  which  is  intended 
to  take  a  place  in  it,  to  be  written  in  the  English  language. 
In  mere  glossaries,  commentaries,  and  philological  treatises, 
the  obsolete  letters  and  obsolete  spelling  have  their  place. 
But  in  literature,  the  ft  and  ]>  are  as  completely  dead  as  a 
Greek  Digamma. 


PAL.EOGRAPHIC    PURISM.  469 

The  most  glaring  defect  of  this  '  Neo-Saxonism '  is  its 
inconsistency.  Human  nature  would  revolt  if  all  the 
schools  were  to  adopt  the  same  rule ;  but  each  separate 
school  contradicts  itself  in  the  same  page.  It  is  curious 
that  the '  Old-English  '  school  wantonly  modernise  the  spell- 
ing of  names  which  happen  not  to  be  'Old-English.' 
They  first  mangle  the  traditions  of  English  literature  by 
twisting  household  words  into  an  archaic  form  ;  and  then, 
in  the  case  of  names  of  the  Latin  race,  they  mangle  the 
traditions  of  English  and  of  foreign  literature  at  once,  by 
twisting  other  household  words  into  a  modern  Anglicised 
form.  Mr.  Freeman  writes  in  his  great  history  :  — '  ALlfred 
compared  with  Lewis  IX'  Now,  here  is  a  double  viola- 
tion of  the  traditions  of  English  literature ;  not  on  the 
same,  but  on  two  contradictory  principles.  '  Saint  Louis ' 
is  as  familiar  to  us  as  'Alfred.'  In  French  and  in  English, 
the  name  has  long  been  written  Louts,  which  is  certainly 
the  actual  French  form.  But,  as  Saint  Louis  was  only 
a  Frenchman,  and  not  a  West-Saxon,  his  true  name  is 
Anglicised  into  what  (in  spite  of  Macaulay)  is  an  obsolete 
form.  And  Alfred,  who  is  West-Saxon  pur  sang,  is  pro- 
moted or  '  translated '  into  ^E  If  red.  If  Lewis  can  be 
shown  to  be  literary  English  (and  there  was  something  to 
be  said  for  that  suggestion  in  Swift's  time)  one  would  not 
object.  But  by  that  rule,  Alfred  must  stand;  for  assuredly 
that  is  literary  English.  One  cannot  have  it  both  ways, 
except  on  the  assumption  that  you  intend  to  spell  none  but 
your  favourite  race  with  archaic  precision. 

William  the  Conqueror,  the  great  subject  of  Mr.  Free- 
man's great  book,  was  king  of  England  for  some  twenty- 
one  years  and  one  of  the  mightiest  kings  who  ever  ruled 
here.  In  Latin,  his  contemporaries  called  him  Willelmus, 
Wilielmns,  or  Wilgelmus ;  in  French,  Guillaume,  or  Wil- 
lame ;  in  English,  Will  elm.  We  have  his  charter  in 


4/0  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

English  to  this  day ;  which  runs  — '  Willelm  Kyng  gret 
Willelm  Bisceop.'  Now,  if  we  are  obliged  to  write  ALlfred, 
and  Eadivard,  why  not  write  the  Conqueror  in  one  of  the 
forms  that  his  contemporaries  used?  But  no;  the  great 
founder  of  the  new  English  monarchy  never  got  over  the 
original  sin  of  being  a  Frenchman ;  and  so  he  is  modern- 
ised like  any  mere  '  Lewis,'  or  '  Henry,'  or  'Philip.' 

In  the  case  of  English  kings,  their  wives  and  relations 
of  non-English  blood,  this  school  can  leave  them  to  the 
vulgar  tongue.  It  is  William,  Henry,  Margaret,  Matilda, 
Mary,  Stephen,  and  so  on.  No  doubt  it  would  look  very 
odd  in  an  English  history  to  read  about  our  sovereigns 
'  Stephen  (or  Estienne)  fighting  with  the  Kaiserinn  Ma- 
thildis.'  But  then,  what  is  the  good  of  all  this  precision  if 
it  is  so  grossly  inconsistent  ?  They  who  insist  on  talking 
of  Elsass  and  Lothringen  write,  like  the  rest  of  us,  Venice 
and  Florence.  And  Mr.  Freeman,  who  is  quite  content  with 
William  and  Stephen,  mere  modern  Anglicisms,  is  very  par- 
ticular how  he  writes  Sokrates.  He  happens  to  be  fond  of 
West-Saxon  annals  and  Greek  philosophers.  And  so,  both 
are  recorded  in  the  aboriginal  cacophony. 

But  there  is  a  far  more  serious  change  of  name  that  the 
'  Old-English '  school  have  introduced ;  which,  if  it  were 
indefinitely  extended,  would  wantonly  confuse  historical 
literature.  I  mean  the  attempt  to  alter  names  which  are 
the  accepted  landmarks  of  history.  It  is  now  thought 
scholarly  to  write  of  the  '  Battle  of  Senlac,'  instead  of  the 
'  Battle  of  Hastings.'  As  every  one  knows,  the  fight  took 
place  on  the  site  of  Battle  Abbey,  seven  miles  from  Hast- 
ings ;  as  so  many  great  battles,  those  of  Tours,  Blenheim, 
Cannes,  Chalons,  and  the  like,  have  been  named  from 
places  not  the  actual  spot  of  the  combat.  But  since,  for 
eight  hundred  years,  the  historians  of  Europe  have  spoken 
of  the  '  Battle  of  Hastings,'  it  does  seem  a  little  pedantic 


PALjEOGRAPHIC    PURISM.  47! 

to  re-name  it.  '  Hastings '  is  the  only  name  given  to  the 
battle  in  Willelms  Domesc/uy  Survey ;  it  is  the  only  name 
given  by  the  Bayeux  Tapestry.  '  Exicrunt  de  Hestenga  et 
venerunt  ad prelium  '  is  there  written  —  not  a  word  about 
Senlac.  The  nameless  author  of  the  Continuation  of 
Wace's  Brut  says  :  — 

A  Hastinges,  stint  encontrd 

Li  rois  e  li  dux  par  grant  fiertd. 

And  Guy,  Bishop  of  Amiens  from  1058-1076  A.D.,  wrote 
a  poem,  '  De  Hastinges  pmlio!  One  would  think  all  this 
was  sufficient  authority  for  us  to  continue  a  name  recorded 
in  history  for  eight  centuries.  So  far  as  I  know,  there  is 
no  positive  evidence  that  Senlac  was  a  place  at  all  ;  the 
sole  authority  for  '  Battle  of  Senlac '  is  Orderic,  an  English 
monk  who  left  England  at  the  age  of  nine  and  lived  and 
wrote  in  Normandy  in  the  next  century.  Yet,  on  the 
strength  of  this  authority,  the  '  Old-English  '  school  would 
erase  from  English  literature  one  of  our  most  familiar 
names. 

Battles  are  seldom  named  with  geographical  precision. 
The  victors  hastily  give  the  first  name ;  and  so  it  passes 
into  current  speech.  To  be  accurate,  the  Battle  of  Salamis 
should  be  the  Battle  of  Psyttaleia;  the  Battle  of  Cannce 
should  be  named  from  the  Aufidus ;  and  the  'Battle  of 
Zama '  was  really  fought  at  Naraggara.  Imagine  an  his- 
torian of  the  future  choosing  to  re-name  the  Battle  of 
Waterloo  from  Hougonmont ;  because,  in  the  twentieth 
century,  some  French  writer  should  so  describe  it.  The 
Battle  of  Trafalgar  would  have  to  be  described  as  the  sea- 
fight  of  'Longitude  6°  7'  5"  West,  and  Latitude  36°  10' 
15"  North.'  In  old  days  we  used  to  say  that  'Charles 
Martel  defeated  the  Saracens  in  the  battle  of  Tours.'  So 
wrote  Gibbon,  Hallam,  Milman.  Now,  we  shall  have  to 
write  —  '  Karl  the  Hammer  defeated  the  Yaarabsvl  Yemen 


4/2  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

on  the  plateau  of  Sancta  Maura'  Surely  all  this  is  the 
mint  and  anise  of  the  annals,  neglecting  the  weightier 
matters  of  the  law. 

Has  not  the  '  Old-English  '  school  made  rather  too  much 
that  Karl  the  Great  was  not  a  Gaul ;  and  that  '  the  Anglo- 
Saxons  '  was  not  the  ordinary  name  of  any  English  tribe  ? 
No  one  is  ever  likely  to  make  these  blunders  again  ;  but 
to  taboo  these  convenient  old  names  from  English  litera- 
ture is  surely  a  needless  purism.  'Charlemagne '  has  been 
spoken  of  in  England  ever  since,  as  Wace  tells  us,  Taillefer 
at  Hastings  died  singing  '  De  Karlemaine  e  de  Rollant ;  ' 
and  in  an  enormous  body  of  literature  for  a  thousand  years 
Charles  has  been  so  named.  The  reason  is  obvious  enough ; 
the  great  Emperor  has  become  known  to  us  mainly  through 
Latin,  French,  and  Old-French  sources,  Chansons  de  Gestes, 
and  metrical  tales  in  a  Romance  dialect.  That  in  itself  is 
an  interesting  and  important  fact  in  literary  history.  The 
pure  Frank  sources,  in  a  Teutonic  dialect,  are  very  much 
fewer  and  less  known.  The  name  '  Charlemagne '  is  as 
much  a  part  of  the  English  language  as  is  the  title,  '  Em- 
peror,' and  it  is  as  little  likely  to  be  displaced  by  any  con- 
temporary phonogram  as  the  names  of  Moses  and  Jesus. 
Let  Germans  talk  about  Kaiser  Karl:  Englishmen  of 
sense  will  continue  to  talk  of  the  '  Emperor  Charlemagne:' 
a  name  which  is  used  by  Gibbon  and  Milman,  by  Hallam 
and  Sir  H.  Maine. 

And  so,  '  Anglo-Saxon '  is  a  very  convenient  term  to 
describe  the  vernacular  speech  used  in  England  before  its 
settlement  by  the  Normans.  '  Old-English  '  is  a  vague  and 
elastic  term.  In  one  sense,  the  orthography  of  Dryden  or 
of  Milton  is  Old-English  ;  so  is  Spenser's,  or  Chaucer's,  or 
the  Ancren  Riwle.  We  want  a  convenient  term  for  the 
speech  of  Englishmen,  before  it  was  affected  by  the  Con- 
quest. Edward  the  Elder,  the  first  true  King  of  all  Eng- 


PAL^EOGRAPHIC    PURISM.  4/3 

land,  chose  to  call  himself  'Rex  Angul-Saxonum  ';  and  an 
immense  succession  of  historians  and  scholars  have  used 
the  term  Anglo-Saxon.  Is  not  that  enough  ?  The  most 
learned  authorities  for  this  period  have  used  it  :  men  like 
Kemble,  Bosworth,  Thorpe,  and  Skeat.  So  too,  Bishop 
Stubbs,  in  his  magnificent  work,  systematically  employs  a 
term  which  is  part  of  the  English  language,  quite  apart 
from  its  being  current  amongst  this  or  that  tribe  of  Engles 
or  West  Saxons.  Perhaps,  then,  we  need  not  be  in  such 
a  hurry  to  outlaw  a  term  that  was  formally  adopted  for 
our  nation  by  the  first  King  of  all  England,  and  has  since 
been  in  use  in  the  language. 

There  is  something  alien  to  the  true  historic  spirit  in 
any  race  jealousy  and  ethnological  partisanship.  History 
is  the  unbroken  evolution  of  human  civilisation ;  and  the 
true  historians  are  they  who  can  show  us  the  unity  and 
the  sequence  of  the  vast  and  complex  drama.  Theories 
of  race  are  of  all  speculations  the  most  cloudy  and  the 
most  misleading.  And  to  few  nations  are  they  less  appli- 
cable than  to  England.  Our  ethnology,  our  language,  our 
history  are  as  mixed  and  complex  as  any  of  which  records 
exist.  Our  nationality  is  as  vigorous  and  as  definite  as 
any  in  the  world  ;  but  it  is  a  geographical  and  a  political 
nationality ;  and  not  a  tribal  or  linguistic  nationality.  To 
unwind  again  the  intricate  strands  which  have  been  wrought 
into  our  English  unity,  and  to  range  them  in  classes  is  a 
futile  task.  If  we  exaggerate  the  power  of  one  particular 
element  of  the  English  race,  one  source  of  the  English 
people,  one  side  of  English  institutions,  one  contributory 
to  the  English  language,  we  shall  find  it  a  poor  equipment 
for  historical  judgment. 

Race  prejudices  are  at  all  times  anti-historic.  Professor 
Clifford  used  to  talk  about  morality  as  an  evolution  of  the 
'tribal*  conscience.  Assuredly  confusion  is  the  only  pos- 


474  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

sible  evolution  for  a  '  tribal '  history.  The  Carlylese  school, 
and  the  Orientalists,  and  the  Deutsch  and  Jutish  enthu- 
siasts, bid  fair  to  turn  our  language  and  its  literature  into 
an  ungainly  polyglott.  Their  pages  bristle  with  Bretwaldas 
and  Heretogas,  Burks  and  Munds,  Folk-friths  and  Tungere- 
fas  ;  or  with  Reicks,  Kurfursts,  Pfalzes,  and  Kaisers.  All 
this  is  very  well  in  glossaries,  but  not  in  literature.  How 
absurd  it  is  to  write  —  '  The  Kurfurst  of  Koln,'  or  '  The 
Ealdorman  of  the  Hwiccas ! '  It  is  as  if  one  wrote  — 
'  The  Due  of  Broglie  was  once  Ministre  of  the  Affaires 
Etrangeres ';  or  that  '  Wellington  defeated  the  Empereur 
Napoleon  and  all  his  Marechaux ':  just  as  they  do  in  a 
lady's-maid's  high-polite  novel.  Why  are  Deutsch  and 
Jutish  titles  to  be  introduced  any  more  than  French  or 
Spanish  ?  In  glossaries  they  are  useful ;  but  histories  of 
England  should  be  written  in  English.  And  it  is  pleasant 
to  turn  to  a  great  book  of  history,  like  that  of  Bishop 
Stubbs  ;  where,  in  spite  of  the  temptations  and  often  of 
the  necessities  of  a  specialist  dealing  with  a  technical 
subject,  the  text  is  not  needlessly  deformed  with  obsolete, 
grotesque,  and  foreign  words. 

A  wide  range  of  ethnology  and  philology  shows  us  that 
these  origins  and  primitive  tongues  were  themselves  the 
issue  of  others  before  them,  and  are  only  a  phase  in  the 
long  evolution  of  history  and  language.  These  Engles, 
and  Saxons,  and  Jutes,  these  Norse  and  Welsh,  had  far  dis- 
tant seats,  and  far  earlier  modes  of  speech.  They  were 
no  more  'Autochthones '  in  the  forests  of  Upper  Germany 
than  they  were  in  Wessex  and  Caint.  Their  speech  has 
been  traced  back  to  Aryan  roots  current  in  Asia.  And 
there,  by  the  latest  glimmerings  of  ethnographic  science, 
we  lose  all  these  Cymric,  and  British,  and  Teutonic  tribes 
in  some  (not  definable)  affinity,  in  some  (not  ascertainable) 
district  of  Central  Asia,  with  some  (not  recoverable)  com- 


PALjEOGRAPHIC    PURISM.  475 

mon  tongue  of  their  own.  So  that  these  war  cries  about 
the  White  Horse,  and  Engles,  and  Jutes,  turn  out  to  mean 
simply  that  a  very  industrious  school  of  historians  choose 
to  direct  their  attention  to  one  particular  phase  of  a  move- 
ment which  is  in  perpetual  flux  ;  and  which,  in  time,  in 
place,  and  in  speech,  can  be  traced  back  to  very  distant 
embryos  in  the  infinite  night  of  conjecture. 

It  is  treason  to  our  country  and  to  scientific  history  to 
write,  as  Mr.  Greene  ventured  to  do  in  his  fine  and  elabo- 
rate Making  of  England,  that  '  with  the  landing  of  Hen- 
gest  English  history  begins.'  The  history  of  England  is 
something  more  than  the  tribal  records  of  the  Engles. 
The  history  of  England  began  with  the  first  authentic 
story  of  organised  communities  of  men  living  in  this 
island  :  and  that  most  certainly  existed  since  Caesar  nar- 
rated his  own  campaigns  in  Britain.  The  history  of 
England,  or  the  history  of  France,  is  the  consecutive 
record  of  the  political  communities  of  men  dwelling  in  the 
lands  now  called  England  and  France.  The  really  great 
problem  for  history  is  the  assimilation  of  race  and  the 
co-operation  of  alien  forces.  And  so,  too,  the  note  of  true 
literature  lies  in  a  loyal  submission  to  the  traditions  of 
our  composite  tongue,  and  respect  for  an  instrument 
which  is  hallowed  by  the  custom  of  so  many  masterpieces. 
Loyal  respect  for  that  glorious  speech  would  teach  us  to 
be  slow  how  we  desecrate  its  familiar  names  with  brand- 
new  archaisms ;  how  we  ruffle  its  easy  flow  with  alien 
cacophonies  and  solecisms,  and  deform  its  familiar  topog- 
raphy with  hieroglyphic  phonograms. 

In  passing  from  the  literary  iconoclasm  of  the 'Old- 
English  '  school  I  would  venture  to  add  that  no  man  is  a 
more  humble  admirer  than  I  am  of  the  vast  learning  and 
the  marvellous  powers  of  research  belonging  to  the  author 
of  the  Norman  Conquest.  Nor  can  any  man  more  deeply 


4/6  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

deplore  another  disaster  which  our  literature  has  sus- 
tained in  the  premature  loss  of  the  author  of  A  Short 
History  of  England:  one  who  in  his  brief  time  has  shown 
such  historical  imagination  and  such  literary  power,  that 
it  is  impossible  to  mention  him  without  a  pang  of  regret. 
Si,  qua  fata  asp  era  rumpas,  Tu  Marcellus  eris. 

We  may  add  a  few  words  about  various  names  which 
under  the  influence  of  a  most  mistaken  literalism  are 
being  wantonly  transformed.  Persons  who  are  anxious 
to  appear  well  informed  seem  almost  ashamed  to  spell 
familiar  names  as  their  grandfathers  did.  What  is  the 
meaning  of  'Vergil'?  As  every  one  knows,  the  best 
MSS.  in  the  last  lines  of  the  fourth  Georgic  spell  Vergil- 
ium ;  and  accordingly  some  scholars  think  fit  so  to  alter 
the  poet's  name.  Be  it  so.  But  'Vergil'  is  not  Latin, 
any  more  than  'Homer'  is  Greek.  Virgil  is  a  familiar 
word,  rooted  deep  in  English  literature  and  thought.  To 
uproot  it,  and  the  like  of  it,  would  be  to  turn  the  English 
language  into  a  quagmire.  We  shall  be  asked  next  to 
write  '  Omer.'  If  all  our  familiar  names  are  to  be  recast, 
as  new  manuscripts  or  autographs  turn  up,  none  of  these 
venerable  names  will  remain  to  us.  We  shall  have  to 
talk  of  the  epic  poets,  Omeros  and  Durante.  Again,  if 
autographs  are  conclusive,  we  shall  have  to  write  of 
Marie,  Quean  of  Scots,  and  Lady  Jane  Duddley ;  of  the 
statesmen,  Cecyll  and  WalsyngJiam ;  of  'Lord  Nelson  and 
Bronte,'  of  the  great  Maryborough,  of  the  poet  Noel-Byron, 
of  Sir  Kenelme  Digby,  Sir  Philip  Sidnei,  and  Arbella 
Seymaure ;  of  Bloody  '  Marye,'  and  Robert  Duddley,  Earl 
of  Leycester.  All  of  these  queer  forms  are  the  actual 
names  signed  by  these  personages  in  extant  autographs. 
The  next  step  will  be  to  write  about  these  personages  in 
the  contemporary  style  ;  and  archaic  orthography  will  pass 
from  proper  names  to  the  entire  text. 


PAL^SOGRAPHIC    PURISM.  477 

The  objection  to  insisting  on  strict  contemporary  orthog- 
raphy is  this  :  the  spelling  of  the  family  name  was  continu- 
ally changing,  and  to  write  it  in  a  dozen  ways  is  to  break 
the  tradition  of  the  family.  If  we  call  Burleigh  '  Cecyll,' 
as  he  wrote  it  himself,  we  lose  the  tradition  of  the  family 
of  the  late  Prime  Minister.  If  we  call  the  author  of  the 
Arcadia  Sidnei,  as  he  wrote  it  himself,  we  detach  him  from 
the  Sidneys.  The  Percys,  Howards,  Harcourts,  Douglas, 
Wyatts,  Lindsays,  and  Montgomerys  of  our  feudal  history 
will  appear  as  the  Perses,  Hawards,  Harecourts,  Dowglas, 
IVt'ats,  Lyndesays,  and  Monggomberrys.  If  we  read  Chevy 
Chase  in  the  pure  palaeography,  we  shall  find  how  the 
'  Doughete  dogglas '  spoke  to  the  '  lord  perse ';  and  how 
there  died  in  the  fray,  Wetharryngton,  ser  hewe  the  mong- 
gomberry,  ser  dauy  Iwdale,  and  ser  charls  a  murre. 

And  then  how  the  purists  do  drag  us  up  and  down  with 
their  orthographic  edicts !  Just  as  the  Old-English  school 
is  restoring  the  diphthong  on  every  side,  the  classical 
reformers  are  purging  it  out  like  an  unclean  thing.  We 
need  not  care  much  whether  we  write  of  Caesar  Q\  'Caesar.' 
But  just  as  we  have  learned  to  write  Caesar  and  Vergil's 
Aeneid,  in  place  of  our  old  friends,  we  are  taught  to  write 
Bada  and  Alfred,  for  'Bede'  and  'Alfred.'  The  'Old- 
English  '  school  revel  in  diphthongs,  even  in  the  Latin 
names;  your  classical  purist  would  expire  if  he  were  called 
upon  to  write  'Caesar'  or  'Pompey.'  Farewell  to  the 
delightful  gossipy  style  of  the  last  century  about  '  Tully,' 
and  '  Maro,'  and  '  Livy ' !  They  knew  quite  as  much  about 
them  at  heart  as  we  do  to-day  with  all  our  Medicean  manu- 
scripts and  our  '  sic.  Cod.  Vat.' 

The  way  in  which  it  all  works  into  ordinary  books  is 
this.  The  compilers  of  dictionaries,  catalogues,  compen- 
diums,  vade-mecums,  and  the  like,  the  writers  of  newspaper 
paragraphs  and  literary  announcements,  are  not  only  a 


478  THE    MEANING   OF    HISTORY. 

most  industrious,  but  a  most  accurate  and  most  alert,  race 
of  men.  They  are  ever  on  the  watch  for  the  latest  dis- 
covery, and  the  last  special  work  on  every  conceivable 
topic.  It  is  not  to  be  expected  that  they  can  go  very 
deeply  into  each  matter  themselves ;  but  the  latest  spelling, 
the  last  new  commentary,  or  the  newest  literary  'find,'  is 
eminently  the  field  of  their  peculiar  work.  To  them,  the 
man  who  has  abolished  the  '  Battle  of  Hastings '  as  a  popu- 
lar error  must  know  more  about  history  than  any  man 
living ;  and  so,  the  man  who  writes  Shakspere  has  appar- 
ently the  latest  lights  on  the  Elizabethan  drama.  Thus 
it  comes  that  our  ordinary  style  is  rapidly  infiltrated 
with  Karls  and  Alfreds,  and  Senlacs,  Qurdns,  and  Shak- 
speres  ;  till  it  becomes  at  last  almost  a  kind  of  pedantry 
to  object. 

How  foolish  is  the  attempt  to  re-name  Shakespeare  him- 
self by  the  aid  of  manuscripts  !  As  every  one  knows,  the 
name  of  Shakespeare  may  be  found  in  contemporary  docu- 
ments in  almost  every  possible  form  of  the  letters.  Some 
of  these  are  —  Shakespeare,  Schakespere,  Schakespeire, 
S}iakespeyre,  Chacsper,  Shakspere,  Shakespere,  Shakespeere, 
Shackspear,  Shakeseper,  Shackespeare,  Saxspere,  Shack- 
speere,  Shaxeper,  Shaxpere,  Shaxper,  Shaxpeer,  Shaxspere, 
Shakspeare,  Shakuspeare,  Shakesper,  Shaksper,  Shackspere, 
Shakspyr,  Shakspear,  Stiakspeyr,  Shackspeare,  Shaxkspere, 
Shackspeyr,  Shaxpeare,  Shakesphere,  Sackesper,  Shackspare, 
Shakspeere,  Shaxpeare,  Shakxsper,  Shaxpere,  Shakspeyr, 
Shagspur,  and  Shaxberd.  Here  are  forty  of  the  contem- 
porary modes  of  spelling  his  name.  Now  are  the  facsimi- 
lists  prepared  to  call  the  great  poet  of  the  world  by 
whichever  of  these,  as  in  a  parish  election,  commands 
the  majority  of  the  written  documents  ?  So  that,  if  we 
have  at  last  to  call  our  immortal  bard,  Chacsper,  or  Shax- 
per, or  Shagspur,  we  must  accept  it  ;  and  in  the  mean- 


PAL^OGRAPHIC    PURISM.  479 

time  leave  his  name  as  variable  as  ever  his  contemporaries 
did? 

Shakespeare  no  doubt,  like  most  persons  in  that  age, 
wrote  his  name  in  various  ways.  The  extant  autographs 
differ ;  and  the  signature  which  is  thought  to  be  Shak- 
spere,  has  been  simply  misread,  and  plainly  shows  another 
letter.  The  vast  preponderance  of  evidence  establishes 
that  in  the  printed  literature  of  his  time  his  name  was 
written  —  Shakespeare.  In  his  first  poems,  Lucrece  and 
Venus  and  Adonis,  he  placed  Shakespeare  on  the  title-page 
So  it  stands  on  the  folios  of  1623  and  1632.  So  also  it 
was  spelled  by  his  friends  in  their  published  works ;  b> 
Ben  Jonson,  by  Bancroft,  Barnefield,  Willobie,  Freeman, 
Davies,  Meres,  and  Weever.  It  is  certain  that  his  name 
was  pronounced  Shake-spear  (i.e.,  as  'Shake'  and  'Spear* 
were  then  pronounced)  by  his  literary  friends  in  London. 
This  is  shown  by  the  punning  lines  of  Ben  Jonson,  by 
those  of  Bancroft  and  others ;  by  Greene's  allusion  to  him 
as  the  only  Shake-scene  ;  and,  lastly,  by  the  canting  heraldry 
of  the  arms  granted  to  his  father  in  1599:  —  'In  a  field  of 
gould  upon  a  bend  sables  a  speare  of  the  first :  with  crest 
a  ffalcon  supporting  a  speare? 

It  is  very  probable  that  this  grant  of  arms,  about  which 
Dethick,  the  Garter-King,  was  blamed  and  had  to  defend 
himself,  practically  settled  the  pronunciation  as  well  as  the 
spelling.  It  is  probable  that  hitherto  the  family  name  had 
not  been  so  spelt  or  so  pronounced  in  Warwickshire.  It 
is  possible  that  SJiake-speare  was  almost  a  nick-name,  or  a 
familiar  stage-name  ;  but,  like  Erasmus,  Melancthon,  or 
Voltaire,  he  who  bore  it  carried  it  so  into  literature.  For 
some  centuries  downwards,  the  immense  concurrence  of 
writers,  English  and  foreign,  has  so  accepted  the  name. 
A  great  majority  of  the  commentators  have  adopted  the 
same  form  :  Dyce,  Collier,  Halliwell-Phillipps,  Staunton, 


480  THE    MEANING    OF    HISTORY. 

W.  G.  Clark.  No  one  of  the  principal  editors  of  the  poet 
writes  his  name  '  Shakspere'  But  so  Mr.  Furnivall  decrees 
it  shall  be. 

One  would  have  thought  so  great  a  preponderance  of 
literary  practice  need  not  be  disturbed  by  one  or  two 
signatures  in  manuscript,  even  if  they  were  perfectly  dis- 
tinct and  quite  uniform.  Yet,  such  is  the  march  of  palaeo- 
graphic  purism,  that  our  great  poet  is  in  imminent  danger 
of  being  translated  into  Shakspere,  and  ultimately  Stiaxper. 
The  Museum  Catalogue  devotes  six  volumes  to  the  poet 
and  his  editors.  All  these  thousands  of  works  are  entered 
under  '  Shakspere ' ;  though  in  about  95  per  cent,  of  them 
the  name  is  not  so  written.  The  editions  of  Dyce,  Collier, 
Staunton,  Halliwell-Phillipps,  and  Clark,  which  have  Shake- 
speare on  their  title-pages,  are  lettered  in  the  binding  Shak- 
spere, Nay,  the  facsimile  of  the  folio  of  1623,  where  we 
not  only  read  Shakespeare  on  the  title-page,  but  laudatory 
verses  addressed  to  '  Shake-speare'  (sic)  is  actually  lettered 
in  the  binding  (facsimile  as  it  purports  to  be),  Shakspere. 
We  shall  certainly  end  with  '  Shaxper? 

The  claim  of  the  palaeographists  to  re-name  great  men 
rests  on  a  confusion  of  ideas.  '  Shakespeare '  is  a  word 
in  the  English  language,  just  as  'Tragedy'  is ;  and  it  is  in 
vain  to  ask  us,  in  the  name  of  etymography,  to  turn  that 
name  into  Shakspere,  as  it  would  be  to  ask  us,  in  the  name 
of  etymology,  to  turn  '  Tragedy  '  into  Goat-song.  The  point 
is  not,  how  did  the  poet  spell  his  name  —  that  is  an  anti- 
quarian, not  a  literary  matter,  any  more  than  how  Homer 
or  Moses  spelled  their  names.  Homer  and  Moses,  as  we 
know,  could  not  possibly  spell  their  names  :  since  alpha- 
bets were  not  invented.  And,  as  in  a  thousand  cases,  the 
exact  orthography  is  not  possible  :  the  matter  which  con- 
cerns the  public  is  the  form  of  a  name  which  has  obtained 
currency  in  literature.  When  once  any  name  has  obtained 


PALjEOGRAPHIC    PURISM.  481 

that  currency  in  a  fixed  and  settled  literature,  it  is  more 
than  pedantry  to  disturb  it :  it  is  an  outrage  on  our  lan- 
guage. And  it  is  a  serious  hindrance  to  popular  education 
to  be  ever  unsettling  familiar  names. 

If  we  are  to  re-edit  Shakespeare's  name  by  strict  revival 
of  contemporary  forms,  we  ought  to  alter  the  names  of  his 
plays  as  well.  There  is  reason  to  think  that  Macbeth  was 
Malbathe.  The  twentieth  century  will  go  to  see  Shaxpers 
Mcelbcethe  performed  on  the  stage.  And  so  they  will  have 
to  go  through  the  cycle  of  the  immortal  plays.  Hamlet 
was  variously  written  Hamblet,  Amleth,  Hamnet,  Hamle, 
and  Hamlett;  and  every  '  revival '  of  Hamlet  will  be  given 
in  a  new  name.  Leirs  daughters  were  properly  Gonorill, 
Ragan,  and  Cordila.  If  Shakspere's  own  orthography  is 
decisive,  we  must  talk  about  the  Midsummer  Night's 
Dreame,  and  Twelffe-Night,  Henry  Fift,  and  Cleopater,  for 
so  he  wrote  the  titles  himself.  Under  the  exasperating 
revivalism  of  the  palaeographic  school  all  things  are  possi- 
ble ;  and,  in  the  next  century,  it  will  be  the  fashion  to  say 
that  'the  master-creations  of  Shaxper  are  undoubtedly  Cor- 
dila, Hamblet,  and  Maelbaethe.'  Goats  and  monkeys !  can 
we  bear  this  ? 

All  this  revivalism  rests  upon  the  delusion,  that  bits  of 
ancient  things  can  be  crammed  into  the  living  organism 
of  modern  civilisation.  Any  rational  historical  culture 
must  be  subordinate  to  organic  evolution  ;  lumps  of  the 
past  are  not  to  be  inserted  into  our  ribs,  or  thrust  down 
our  throats  like  a  horse  drench.  A  brick  or  two  from  our 
father's  houses  will  not  really  testify  how  they  built  their 
homes  ;  and  exhuming  the  skeletons  of  their  buried  words 
may  prove  but  a  source  of  offence  to  the  living.  An  actor 
who  had  undertaken  the  character  of  Othello  once  blacked 
himself  all  over  the  body,  in  order  to  enter  more  fully  into 
the  spirit  of  the  part ;  but  it  is  not  recorded  that  he  sur- 

2H 


482  THE    MEANING   OF    HISTORY. 

passed  either  Edmund  Kean  or  Salvini.  So  we  are  told 
that  there  exists  a  company  of  enthusiastic  Ann-ists,  who 
meet  in  the  dress  of  Addison  and  Pope,  in  boudoirs  which 
Stella  and  Vanessa  would  recognise,  and  read  copies  of 
the  old  Spectator,  reprinted  in  contemporary  type. 

In  days  when  we  are  warned  that  the  true  feeling  for 
high  art  is  only  to  be  acquired  by  the  wearing  of  ruffles 
and  velvet  breeches,  we  shall  soon  be  expected,  when  we 
go  to  a  lecture  on  the  early  Britons,  to  stain  our  bodies  all 
over  with  woad,  in  order  to  realise  the  sensations  of  our 
ancient  '  forbears ' ;  and  no  one  will  pass  in  English  his- 
tory till  he  can  sputter  out  all  the  guttural  names  in  the 
Saxon  Chronicle.  Palaeography  should  keep  to  its  place, 
in  commentaries,  glossaries,  monographs,  and  the  like. 
In  English  literature,  the  literary  name  of  the  greatest 
ruler  of  the  West  is  Charlemagne ;  the  literary  name  of 
the  most  perfect  of  kings  is  Alfred ;  and  the  literary  name 
of  the  greatest  of  poets  is  Shakespeare.  The  entire  world, 
and  not  England  alone,  has  settled  all  this  for  centuries. 


THE    END. 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIO_NAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


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